


Vigilance V: Ye Who Enter Here

by nightinngales



Series: Vigilance [5]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen, Heavily Based on the Vigilant mod by Vicn, Mod References, Modded Skyrim, Occasional Lore Adjustments, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:48:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 75,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22372063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightinngales/pseuds/nightinngales
Summary: With Eres missing, it's up to Inigo to find a way to reach her. With the help of Serana, Valerica, and Isran back at Fort Dawnguard, they might just find a way to track her down. But following Eres' trail may not be as simple as it seems when Molag Bal is involved. Time itself is working against them. Is it even possible to bring someone back from the point of no return?
Relationships: Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Serana
Series: Vigilance [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1585780
Comments: 27
Kudos: 139





	1. Intricate Rituals

**Author's Note:**

> Finally here. This is the last arc of the Vigilant mod. As I've said previously, there have been some shifts and changes to the fic's version of mod events, both for brevity and less confusion, mostly in the manner of the story's execution. There is a LOT that happens in this act in the mod itself, and I couldn't possibly have included all of it without writing an act longer than the entire series combined. This arc alone, even when rushing through it, still took me six hours to finish even on my fourth time through it where I knew where everything was. There is so much content I couldn't fit in this act, so I really would recommend playing it if you have the chance. 
> 
> Anyways, enough plugging, last thing to note:  
> There have been a couple adjustments to ES lore throughout this act. Keep in mind that ES lore is, respectfully speaking, a fucking mess, and much of it directly contradicts itself or is intentionally vague. I have taken liberties with some of the concepts here to tell a more cohesive story. If you're a lore purist this may annoy you a bit, but consider yourself warned.

ACT V

CHAPTER I

INTRICATE RITUALS

FORT DAWNGUARD   
_War Room_

An oppressive silence hangs in the air, the tension so heavy and so thick that one might have been able to slice it with a knife. The cat Inigo has fallen to silence since telling his story, shifting awkwardly where he stands, nerves too frayed to allow him to sit still. Isran leans against the table in the war room, braced on his hands, glaring at the stone floor as if it had offended him personally. Valerica has fallen heavily onto a storage trunk, being that the room is entirely devoid of seats—Isran has always been of the mind that men paid closer attention while standing—and now sits, elbows planted on her knees, her chin propped on her thumbs and hands clasped in front of her mouth, a deeply troubled look on her face. 

Serana, for her part, stands at one of the embrasures in the fort’s wall, her gaze fixed somewhere in the distant snow-capped mountains that surround them. She has not moved in some time. Has not so much as spoken. 

Long minutes pass in this way, the air so quiet and so still that it seems almost as though none of them have so much as breathed since Inigo had broken the news. The two vampires especially have been still as statues. Isran does not move much more than they do, save for the working of his jaw as he chews at his bottom lip, his brow deeply furrowed. 

Finally, Isran moves. He straightens, crossing his arms over his chest, and sweeps his gaze across the room. He rests that gaze briefly on each of them, measuring. The cat Inigo, Isran is uncertain of. He likely would not have trusted his story at all, had Inigo not come bearing Dawnbreaker. Isran feels a tic in his jaw.

 _Dawnbreaker._ The memory of seeing that blade in Inigo's hand still bothers him more than he'd care to admit. Holding it in his own hands, even, had felt _wrong_. He’d never seen Eres without it. If there is anything that had convinced him that Inigo is telling the truth of the matter, it is that. Had Eres been anywhere in Skyrim, Isran is certain: She would not have left Dawnbreaker behind. He had known as soon as he had seen it that Inigo had not come bearing good news. 

Isran had expected bad news. Being a man of his age and his station, Isran has gotten all too accustomed to hearing bad news. He expects bad news more often than not. 

This is more than just ‘bad news’. 

He doesn’t need anyone to tell him that. He might have left the life of a Vigilant behind years ago, but he hadn’t forgotten the things he had learned as one. Including such things as the Daedra, and the Realms of Oblivion those Daedra called home. He knows very well what Coldharbour is. Molag Bal’s Realm of Oblivion. The resting place of the Damned. The very place where such abominations as Serana and Valerica themselves had been created. 

Yes, he’s more than aware of what Coldharbour is. It might as well have been Hell. 

And now, Eres had gone and gotten herself mixed up with Molag Bal, and ended up in Coldharbour herself. 

“Remind me.” Isran sets his eyes upon Inigo, and the poor cat flinches at the sound of his voice. “How, exactly, did Eres come to cross paths with the likes of Molag Bal?” 

Inigo’s mouth twists. His snout wrinkles. The look in his eyes is uncertain. 

“Inigo does not know _all_ the details,” Inigo starts. “Eres only told him a bit of it. But,” he hesitates, when both Serana and Valerica look at him, then continues haltingly. “When Eres first became a Vigilant, she was recruited by a man named Altano. Altano was an agent of Molag Bal, and Altano slaughtered the Vigilants at the Temple of Stendarr, and summoned Molag Bal beneath Stendarr’s Beacon, at the altar. Then Molag Bal ate Altano, and Eres was forced to fight him. That is how Molag Bal first learned of her, Inigo assumes.” 

“And you said that you encountered him again, in Windhelm?” Isran presses. 

Inigo nods. “Inigo did not see him, but Eres did. She said she saw him before we fought Lamae. Then we met Facis, who said Eres freed Lamae from Molag Bal, and…” Inigo wrings his hands together. “Facis said that Eres had made Molag Bal angry. That he would not forget that Eres had freed his favorite. When we went to Bruiant, Eres suspected that Molag Bal was involved, but she went into the mansion before Inigo did, and the mansion locked Inigo out.” 

“You couldn’t break a window?” Isran grouses. 

“Inigo tried,” he says. “Many times. All day, for almost three whole days, Inigo tried to find another way in. But I never could. The windows would not break. I could not pick the locks. I even found an axe and tried to break the door down, but the blade would just bounce off of the wood.” He shakes his head. “There was no way inside. Then the mansion started to burn. And you know what happened after that.” 

Valerica stands abruptly, bracing her hands on her hips. She sends Serana a severe look, her eyes cutting like glass. “It seems your friend has gotten herself in over her head. _Well_ over.”

Isran looks to Serana, and sees the woman’s face contort with anger, eyes flashing. Once upon a time, he may have been surprised to see a vampire getting defensive over a mere mortal. Strangely, nowadays he has come to expect it—at least when it comes to Serana and Eres. He may be an old man, but he’s not blind. He knows just as well as any other that the relationship between Serana and Eres is…unusual. Unusually close. He is not entirely convinced the two of them aren’t courting in secret. Not that he cares enough to ask. Eres is a grown woman. If she wants to get herself involved with a vampire, that’s her business. If a person _had_ to find themselves a vampire companion, he supposes one could do worse than the likes of Serana. 

“We can’t just _leave_ her in there.” Serana’s eyes dart from Valerica, to Isran, to Inigo, and then back again. When none of them say a word, her eyes harden. “I’m _not_ leaving her in there.” 

Valerica glares right back at her. “And just what do you propose we do, Serana? Venture into Coldharbour ourselves? Paint a target on our backs?”

“We _find_ a way to get in there and—”

“Serana,” Valerica says, and her voice is notably gentler than it had been before, if only by a fraction. “While I understand that you wish to bring your friend back, I don’t believe you understand what is at stake here.” 

Serana spins away from her, back to the slitted window, form rigid. “ _You_ don’t understand what’s at stake here,” she mutters, though not quite quietly enough that they don’t hear it. 

Valerica drops her head for a moment, sighing. “Serana. Neither you nor I can go into Coldharbour. We are _of_ Molag Bal. Were one of us to enter, he would be able to sense our arrival. Not only would that place Eres in more danger than she is likely already in, but _us_ as well. His influence is much stronger within his own realm. We may go in,” Valerica says, “but we may not be ourselves, were we to ever return.” 

Isran can tell by the stiffness in Serana’s posture that she still isn’t listening. She’s still too wrapped up in her own head, still too blindsided by the sudden knowledge of Eres’ fate. Looking at her now, Isran doesn’t think anything short of death itself could have stopped Serana from trying to find a way into Coldharbour on her own. 

“If I’m not mistaken,” Isran says slowly, “Molag Bal would be more likely to corrupt one of you, should you step foot back in Coldharbour. His connection to the two of you would be far stronger within his own realm.” Serana turns to look at him, brow furrowing. “Should you enter Coldharbour, Molag Bal may merely turn you against her. Instead of helping her,” he glances at Valerica, and the woman nods. He looks back at Serana, his theory confirmed. “Instead of helping her, you may end up hunting her instead.” 

Serana’s expression twists into something not quite unlike pain. She looks at him like she wishes he could tell her anything else, but Isran has never been the kind of man to sugarcoat. 

When Serana speaks again, her voice is hushed, half broken on jagged, raw emotion. “I can’t leave her there.” 

“And we won’t,” Inigo says quickly, stepping forward. “ _I_ won’t,” he amends. “I said I would go into Coldharbour to bring her back. Inigo meant this.” 

Isran looks at him, with all of his apparent innocence and naivete, and sighs. “We can’t let you go in there alone. You might never make it out.” 

“I can go,” Serana insists. “If just _one_ of us goes—”

“The danger is just as real,” Valerica counters. “Even if it were just you. He would still know you have entered his Realm.” Her expression shifts, morphing into one of concern. “Serana, please, think about this clearly. You are a Daughter of Coldharbour. Molag Bal has already—”

“I don’t _care_ , Mother. If you’re not going to help—”

Valerica’s expression chills, then. She rocks back on her heels, raises her chin, stare down her nose at her daughter like she is little more than a child. “ _If_ you will not budge in this, then you shall not have my aid. Which you _will_ need, if you truly plan on opening a portal to Coldharbour.” 

Isran looks between them. “I take it you’re the only one who knows how,” he drawls, when Serana looks like she might have throttled the woman across from her if it hadn’t been her own mother. In fact, Isran isn't certain their relation would even stop her. 

“That is correct,” Valerica confirms, though she doesn’t look away from Serana while she says it. She holds Serana’s gaze, meeting her challenge without even a hint of uncertainty. Valerica would not budge on this, that Isran can see for himself. “Without my help, you will not have power sufficient enough to open the portal on your own—assuming, of course, that you would be able to ascertain _how_ to do so to begin with.” 

Isran has heard vampires growl. Feral ones, mostly, often before they attacked. Even more often when they were hungry. He has not, until now, ever heard Serana growl—but she does, then, red eyes glowing dangerously bright. 

“Alright,” he steps between them, and wonders inwardly how he had gotten to the position where he is consciously throwing himself between two vampires on the brink of a brawl. “That’s enough. We need to discuss this calmly.” He looks at Serana when he says this, and does not flinch under her glare. He has seen far worse than what she can offer. “ _Without_ allowing our emotions to dictate our decisions.” 

“Easy for you to say,” Serana snaps at him. “You probably don’t give a shit about Eres outside of how you can use her. Now that my father’s been taken care of, she’s expendable. And you,” she turns on her mother, her anger flaring even hotter. “You’ve _never_ liked her, and you’ve never even bothered to hide it. If you’re not going to help, then I’ll go somewhere else. There are plenty of mages in Skyrim, _Mother_. You’re not the only person in the world capable of creating a damned portal.” 

Isran speaks before Valerica can respond. He can see plainly on the look on her face that this will only escalate further if the two of them are allowed to go at each other’s throats. It wouldn’t even be the first time he’s seen them argue since they’d arrived. The two of them could not so much as be in the same room for more than an hour without finding something to snipe at each other about. Within mere days of their arrival, he had learned to actively avoid them when they were together, lest he be witness to a family squabble. 

“Calm down.” Isran says, and very nearly regrets it when Serana’s eyes snap to his, flashing, and he sees her body jerk forward as though she has to stop herself from lunging at him. It’d been too long since he’d been in a household full of women. He’d forgotten just how that phrase was more like igniting a fire than extinguishing one. 

“We’ve already gone over this,” Isran says slowly, keeping his voice carefully even. Eres had better thank him _profusely_ for playing mediator, once they get her back. He is _far_ too old for this. “Neither of you can go into Coldharbour. Molag Bal could turn both of you against her. Inigo has already decided to go on his own.” 

“And you _just_ said we can’t send him alone,” Serana snaps back at him, still thoroughly incensed. 

Isran sighs, and everything in his body hates what he is about to say next. 

“Because we can’t.” He looks Serana in the eye, holding her fiery gaze with his own. “Which is why— _if_ you can guarantee that we can get out again, I will go with him.” 

Both Serana and Valerica deflate at once, staring at him like he’s grown a second head. Isran isn’t even surprised by the look they give him—he knows exactly how insane he sounds. He might even be just as stunned as they are. 

But he’d known it. He’d known it from the moment Inigo had walked in those doors with Dawnbreaker in his hands. He’d known it the moment Inigo had asked them to send him to Coldharbour. He’d known that he would end up going himself. He’d known that he would volunteer. Whether Eres might still considered part of the Dawnguard officially may have been a matter up for debate. Whether _Isran_ still considers her one of his best and most reliable soldiers, however, is not. He doesn’t abandon his men. He never has, and he never will. He’s not going to start now. Even if that means walking right into Oblivion. Like he has no gods-damned sense at all. 

“ _You_?” Serana looks at him with such a flabbergasted expression that he’s almost offended. “ _You’re_ offering to go into Coldharbour?” 

“That is what I said. Did I stutter?” 

“No, you just—” Serana blinks, rapidly, several times in a row. She looks genuinely flummoxed, like she has suddenly learned that a fundamental truth about the world is _wrong_ , like someone had told her the sky is green, and grass is blue, and Serana had been the only person to not know it. “I wasn’t expecting _you_.” 

“Got any better suggestions?” Isran asks her. “ _Other_ than you or your mother? Know any other former Vigilants with a death wish?” 

“Can’t say I do,” Serana’s shock has faded into more of a deep consideration, like she’s seeing him for the first time. One of these days, Serana is going to realize he’s actually a decent man, deep down. She’d better not go telling anyone. He has a reputation to uphold. “Are you _sure_?” 

“Don’t make me change my mind.” Isran looks from Serana to Valerica, and he sees the older woman settle. She looks at Isran rather doubtfully, but she at least looks satisfied that she may be able to avoid her daughter entering Coldharbour herself. To Valerica, Isran asks, “You said you know a way into Coldharbour?” 

“I have been there before, yes,” Valerica says, haltingly. The glance she sends Serana is rife with meaning. Isran allows them that private look, and does not call attention to it. “It is not one of my most … _fond_ memories,” she explains, looking back to Isran himself, “but, I am certain that I would be able to recreate the portal, had I some time to craft the ritual and obtain the ingredients required.”

“Ritual,” Isran repeats. “And just how long would this ritual take to prepare?” He glances at Inigo. “How long has it been since Eres disappeared, did you say? A week?” 

“Four days,” Inigo answers quietly. “Well,” he looks out the small slitted window, toward the night sky. “Almost five, now.” 

“Five days in Coldharbour already…” Isran murmurs lowly. “And however many days it will take the two of you to get this portal prepared.” 

“Don’t—” Serana starts, but Isran asks the question anyways. He must. 

“Are we even sure that she’s still alive in there? That she’ll still be alive when we get there?” From the look on Valerica’s face, he already knows the answer. “There’s no way for us to know, is there?” 

Serana does not answer, and after several seconds of tense silence, Valerica rises to the occasion instead. 

“There is not,” she confirms. “Everything that ‘lives’ within Coldharbour, so to speak, is already dead. Even if there were such a way for us to seek out Eres’ life force, specifically, to see if we could find a sign of her living—in Coldharbour, it is very likely she is, by all appearances, not quite alive.” 

Isran’s brow furrows. “She’s either dead or alive. There’s no in between.”

“Not quite,” Valerica shakes her head. “Not in Coldharbour, nor any plane of Oblivion. It is a realm in which you exist more as a _soul_ ,” Valerica tells him, “than as a person. A soul can exist in both a state of living, as we see it, and also living as the deceased live, after life as _we_ know it as ended. That is, of course, not mentioning the undead. This distinction is more apparent within Oblivion, wherein a physical body is merely an apparatus with which to interact with the world around you, but is not strictly necessary for function.” 

Isran’s brow wrinkles, almost painfully. There's never anything _simple_ about magic, is there. “Boil this down for me. Eres can be _both_ alive and dead at the same time?” 

“More like, we wouldn’t be able to tell which she is currently, if we attempted to scry for her energy signature,” Serana supplies, in a much more helpful way than Valerica might have explained it, though her voice is still just as tense as her posture is. “We would be able to tell whether or not her Soul is there—but we already know that much. We wouldn’t be able to easily discern whether or not that Soul was alive or dead, because such a thing doesn’t really exist in Oblivion. A soul is just a soul, whether it inhabits a physical body or not.” 

“Inigo is getting a headache.” 

“You and me both, Cat,” Isran mutters. “How long do you need to get this ritual ready?” 

“Ideally?” Valerica asks. Isran nods. “A few days. No longer than a week, I expect.” Isran’s mouth twists, and Valerica mirrors the expression herself. “I know it is not ideal, but these things cannot be rushed. Especially if we want to maintain a way to communicate with you while you are there, as well as a way to know when to open the portal for your return.” She looks to Serana. “I will need your help in this, my daughter. Even I am not strong enough on my own to be able to create such an apparatus alone.” 

Serana looks at Isran. “You’re going to go with him?” She asks him, instead of answering her mother. Isran nods. “You swear by it?” Isran nods again, brow furrowing. Serana purses her lips, staring at him hard. 

After a moment, she nods. “Okay,” she says, and she catches her mother’s eyes. “I’ll help you with this. But you,” she turns to Isran. “You come back _with_ her, or not at all.” 

Isran raises a brow at that, but he had expected no less of Serana. “Whether you believe me or not, Serana—I _do_ care about Eres. I will do all I can to bring her back. I wouldn’t be throwing myself into Oblivion if I didn’t plan on going the extra mile, now, would I?” 

Serana watches him a moment longer, then nods. She turns then to Valerica. “We’re starting _now_ ,” she demands, and she’s already stalking out of the room before any of them have a chance to respond. “The sooner we get this ritual ready, the sooner we get Eres _home_.” 

Valerica gives Isran a curt nod of her own, then turns to follow her daughter out of the war room. 

When they are both gone, Isran turns to find the cat standing awkwardly near the center of the room, looking entirely unsure of what to do with himself now that the meeting had concluded. Isran sighs. 

“Come on, Cat. Let’s find you a room.” 

COLDHARBOUR   
_Mathmalatu Priory_

With a desperate gasp, Eres wakes. Her eyes snap open to darkness, and though she tries, she finds herself unable to move. The walls are pressing in on her, so tight against her sides that her arms dig into her body, crossing over her chest as they could not fit on either side of her. As her eyes adjust, she realizes that the darkness is not darkness at all: there is stone on either side of her, pressing her even smaller than she already is, and there is stone above her, blocking out whatever light may have entered. 

She is in a coffin, she realizes, with sudden, terrifying clarity. Her breath comes in short spurts, her arms jerking into movement almost robotically, as though it has been some time since she has last moved them at all. Her arms feel almost alien, foreign, like her brain can’t quite remember how to control them herself. She presses the flats of her hands against that stone above her and tries, vainly, to push against the lid of that stone coffin, but she can call no strength into her arms. They might as well have been made of parchment, they feel so weak. 

Just when she is beginning to feel the seeds of panic blossoming in her chest, the stone lid above her shifts ever so slightly. It moves, just a little, to the right. Just enough that Eres can see the tiniest sliver of light, can feel the tiniest influx of fresh air upon her face. She feels it in her hair, gentle against her fringe. 

It might have been comforting, in that moment, had she been the one who had moved that lid. 

But it had not been her. She had not been strong enough. Instead, Eres feels the stone shifting beneath her fingers as someone else slides the lid away from the top of the coffin, as more light and air enter her small, cramped space, and finally, the loud ringing _thud_ as the stone lid tilts off the other side and slams into the floor somewhere below. 

When she looks up, meaning to thank whoever had freed her, her words die in her throat. She nearly pushes herself further into the depths of the coffin, at the sight of this man who was not quite a man. 

It is vaguely man-shaped; the thing staring down at her. It seems to have two arms, and two legs, and a pronounced slouch to his back that makes him look as though he is permanently bending forward. Dressed in tattered, yet somehow still brilliant, crimson robes, the man has pulled a hood over much of his face—but it does nothing to hide his disfigurement. 

The thing that looks down at her does not _have_ a face, but instead, some kind of mutated growth where his face should have been. She could not even have guessed where his eyes or mouth might have been, but the man speaks to her all the same. 

“Look who finally woke up,” the man says, in an old, wizened voice, nasally and thin. He sounds almost as though he’s speaking from a great distance, as though his mouth is somewhere far beneath the growths that have sprouted from his face. “I hope you found that sarcophagus comfortable.” 

The man does not have a face, or a mouth, or eyes, but somehow, Eres gets the sense that the man is smiling at her, amused by his own dark humor. 

“What’s wrong?” He asks, in a poor, sardonic imitation of a coo. “You’re making a face as if your every bone hurts.” 

He makes no move to help her out, even as he watches her struggle to free her arms from the cramped space within. She doesn’t even have enough strength left in them to haul herself out. She manages only to sit up, pulling her knees closer to her, and then comes to realize that she doesn’t have the strength to stand just yet. 

“Well?” She looks at him. She hides a grimace at seeing his mutated face once more, and looks away. She would rather not look at him if she doesn’t have to. He makes her stomach roll. “Who are you?” He asks her. “You can’t be one of ours. You’re not of the Alessian Order.” 

She looks back at him, now, unable to help it. Her brow furrows. Her eyes sweep her surroundings, taking in the high stone walls, the pews, him, the statue looming above her from just behind the sarcophagus she still sits in. All of it looks somehow both very, very old, and new, all at once. It looks as though she’s stepped into an ancient ruin—only, long before it has become considered ancient. Something about the place even looks strikingly familiar. 

“I’m…” For a moment, Eres isn’t quite sure what to call herself. For a moment, she can’t remember her name. “Eres,” she says at last. She tries not to let show how much it troubles her that she had, at least for a brief time, not remembered who she was. “I’m…”

Eres freezes. 

Memories come to her unbidden. She remembers Bruiant.

She remembers Molag Bal. She remembers his threats against Serana, his offer to her, her acceptance when he had bid her life in exchange for leaving Serana alone—

She remembers. And her heart _burns_ with hatred. 

“I’m a Vigilant of Stendarr,” she tells this man, this horribly disfigured man. She is in Coldharbour. He is likely one of Molag Bal’s followers—or perhaps, one of the unlucky souls who has been cursed by him. It makes little difference to her. 

“Stendarr.” The man snorts derisively. “So you serve that scheming God of Righteousness?”

Eres finally manages to lift herself from the sarcophagus, standing on her own two feet. She nearly stumbles lifting her legs out of the coffin to step out of it, her limbs not quite wishing to listen to her as well as they usually might. She catches herself, just barely, and hears something clatter on the ground. 

“That explains your downfall,” the man says. He bends down to pick up what she has dropped. When he hands it to her, she almost drops it all over again.

It is her Horn of Stendarr. Her symbol, the sacred symbol of her role as a Vigilant, as Keeper. And the Horn she had once kept religiously polished and glossy has turned a dull, rusted color, cracks spidering along its surface. The rim around its wider end is chipped in three separate places. From it, even when she strains her ears, she can hear only indeterminate groans, pained and anguished. There are no guiding whispers. No assuring warmth. 

Stendarr has well and truly left her. This time, it just might be for good.

“Did you kill a beggar and take his clothes, then? Or use an innocent child for your shield, perhaps?” 

Eres feels ill. She closes her fist around the rusted Horn, and its rough surface serves only to reminder her of what she has lost. Why couldn’t Stendarr have understood her? Surely he’d been able to see into her motivations. He should have known that she had never agreed to Molag Bal willingly… 

But what does it matter, anyways? A part of her mind wonders. 

She is in Coldharbour. Stendarr would have no power here, even if he hadn’t abandoned her. Even if she could still hear his whispers. 

The anger in her chest surges back to fore, boiling hot and choking. She has never, never in her life hated something as much as she hates Molag Bal. 

She turns her eyes back to that disfigured man, Horn clutched in one hand, and demands of him, “Where is Molag Bal?” 

“Probably at the top of the Tower in the center of the city.” He answers with a shrug. “Why do you want to know? You’d better not ask him for a favor, believe me. You’ll just end up like the rest of them. Oh,” he adds, “and don’t bother with the rest of the Divines, either. The Alessian Order burned all their priests and servants.” 

“I’ll _kill_ him.” 

“Molag Bal?” The man barks a sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff. She almost hits him. “That’s madness. No mortal can kill a god. He’s the playwright of this tragedy, you see. We’re all just his puppets.” He shakes his head then, clicking his tongue. “Always the usual fools, climbing out of these coffins. Never changes.” 

He pauses, and Eres gets the sense he is looking at her more closely. 

“No,” he says slowly. “There was another like you. One who was still alive like you. I believe he was a slave trader. His eyes burned like fire…” He regards her for a long moment. “Yours are as cold as ice.” 

“How do I get to Molag Bal?” Eres ties the horn back at her belt. She’s going to keep it. Even if Stendarr has no power here. It’s a reminder of where she’s come from. Of why she must do what she must do. Of what she has to fight for. 

“You can’t get to him.” The man says. “As I said, he’s in the center of the city, and there’s a barrier up around it. You won’t even be able to leave the Waterfront District,” he adds. “A flying Worm guards the exit. Everyone who tries to leave that way is eaten by him.” 

“A flying Worm?” 

“A Daedroth who learned to fly. He’s called Menta Na, I think. If you don’t want to die swallowed by him, you can quietly wait for your end here. You’ll rot all the same, but at least it won’t hurt. Steer clear of the exit to the north, for that is where Menta Na roams.” Strangely, he says this slowly, very deliberately. Her brow furrows. “If you have need of me, I am Inquisitor Pepe.” 

He extends his disfigured, claw-like hand. When Eres does not reach out to shake it, he instead grabs her, cradling her hand between both of his mutated ones. Her skin crawls, but she feels something press against her palm. Something that is not his hand at all, but some kind of item he has pressed there and given to her surreptitiously. 

He quietly curls her fingers around that item, and then turns away without another word. 

Eres frowns after him, hand still half-extended with the spherical object, cool and a bit wet, still held there. Inquisitor Pepe leaves her there, disappearing through a set of large, old doors, and she is left alone in that room where there is nothing except for her, and a wall of opened sarcophagi not unlike her own. Eres feels a strange tickling sensation beneath her skin, something of an awareness prickling at her magic. She turns her hand over, opens it, and nearly drops the damn thing when she sees what rests there. 

In her hand there is an Eye, cool and wet to the touch, but its surface is hard rather than soft and pliant, and it is perhaps the only thing that keeps her from dropping it entirely. It _looks_ incredibly real—it even _feels_ real, when she rolls it between her fingers. But when she squeezes, the Eye does not squish or distort in her hands, as solid as a fist-sized, perfectly rounded rock or gem. 

Stranger still, Eres can feel its prickling essence, the way its aura prods and teases at her power, deep beneath her skin. She feels it just at the edge of her consciousness, hears it—whispers, not unlike Stendarr’s own but softer, hardly discernible from the wind itself, brushing past her ears, and more—when she closes her eyes with it clutched in her hand, flashes of imagery race across her vision. 

In her mind’s eye, she sees towers, four of them, falling, one after the other. She sees the barrier around the city dropping. She sees a dream, a memory, a thought. She sees Molag Bal waiting for her at the top. She sees him dead at her own hands. 

Eres opens her eyes again, and clutches the Eye tight. 

She’s not sure what the Eye is, exactly. She’s not certain she wants to know. What she is certain of, however, is that it has shown her how to get into the City—how to get to Molag Bal. And Inquisitor Pepe had been the one to give it to her. He, too, it seemed, wanted Molag Bal destroyed. 

That’s fine with her. She doesn't know why he'd chosen her, and then just walked away and left her behind. She doesn’t need him, now that she has this Eye. Allies or no allies, she’s going to find him. And she will find a way to put an end to him if it’s the last thing she does. 

Maybe she’s insane, thinking of fighting a God. 

But all Gods had once been mortals. She is going to remind Molag Bal just what that feels like. One way or another. She won’t rest until she does. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've probably noticed, but the style of this act is going to differ a bit from previous acts. We'll be seeing multiple POVs throughout, and each will be tagged with a location. This should help make the transitions between POVs a bit less confusing, I hope. 
> 
> In future chapters if there are terms or lore concepts that aren't common knowledge, I will define them at the end of the chapter. I didn't want to spend too much time with exposition weighing down the narrative on the more complex concepts, but they will be defined at the bottom of the chapter if people want a more solid definition than just going by the context provided in-chapter. 
> 
> Example:  
> Embrasure: An arrow slit in a fort wall. The side facing the interior tends to be wider, which narrows to a thin slit on the outside. 
> 
> I'm thinking of uploading on a schedule this time around if I can remember it, as I'm still writing the act following this one just to allow me some time to get a bit more ahead. How about 2x per week?


	2. Final Preparations

ACT V  
CHAPTER II   
FINAL PREPARATIONS

Over the next several days, Isran grows accustomed to the strangeness of magical experimentation within the walls of Fort Dawnguard. As such, when he happens upon Serana standing in the middle of his bedroom with a drinking horn held to one ear, he cannot even consider himself surprised. It is somehow not the strangest thing he has seen of late.

“Do I _want_ to know what you’re doing in here?” Isran asks, though part of him already wishes he hadn’t.

Serana holds up a finger, as if asking him to wait. She appears to be—as insane as it sounds—listening for something within the horn. After a long, pregnant pause, she finally drops the horn from her ear and looks at him. “We’re trying to come up with a way to communicate with you in Coldharbour. You’re probably going to need our help to find her. It’s not exactly the size of a closet.”

“I can imagine.” He looks at the horn, but he can see nothing about it that would indicate it is any different from any other horn he’s ever seen. Had they simply chosen it because of its relation to Stendarr? “And how is that going?”

Serana raises her brows, looking rather pleased. It’s the first time in three days he’s seen her do anything other than scowl. “Well, surprisingly. We’ve managed to get this working.” She waves the horn in her hands. “Not the most _dignified_ method of communication, perhaps, but it works.”

Isran goes to her, taking the horn when she offers it. “And how does it work?”

“Hold it to your ear.”

Isran narrows his eyes at her, but she seems entirely serious. He is quite aware that he must look as stupid as he feels, holding the open end of the horn to his ear. He waits, and hears nothing.

Then, Serana grasps at the pendant around her neck, and though her mouth moves, he hears her voice not from her mouth, but from the horn, pressed against his ear. He pulls it away, more impressed than he wants to admit.

“And is this able to function within Coldharbour?” He asks her, handing it back.

“We think so.” He frowns. “Mother and I have tested it with the Soul Cairn, at least. Which is—not _quite_ the same as Coldharbour, but it _is_ a plane of Oblivion, all the same. We expect that if it works there, it should also work within Coldharbour.”

“Good,” he says, and nods to himself. That was good. Progress. _Finally_. They had not had much of it recently. “And the portal? That…ritual, or whatever it was you needed?”

At that, Serana closes her eyes, and lets out a long sigh. “That’s not going quite as well, unfortunately. We haven’t found a way to get you in without him noticing, yet.”

“Without him noticing?” Isran shakes his head. “I imagined there wouldn’t be any way around that. I figured he likely knows whoever comes in and out of that place, already. It may have to be a risk we have no choice but to take.”

Serana’s mouth twists. “If we can’t find a way to hide your arrival, he could send people after you if he guesses at why you’re there. And given the timing…” She trails off, brow furrowing. “I can’t imagine it would be too much of a leap of logic for him to assume that you’d be there to find Eres.”

“Then let him come.” Isran says this far more confidently than he feels. It’s not quite a bluff. He isn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of coming toe to toe with a Daedric Prince. No one would be. But, he knows that it is likely inevitable. Even if Serana and Valerica _could_ manage to find a way to get them into Coldharbour undetected, he can’t imagine it would be very long before Molag Bal recognized their intrusion for what it was. “One way or another, whether it’s the portal itself or something else, Molag Bal will know we’re there. We can’t waste time trying to do the impossible when Eres’ life may be at stake.”

Serana has long since proven herself to be a woman Isran can place his trust in. Even if she had not, the conflict that passes over her face would have been enough to convince him. He knows how much it pains her to not be able to go in on her own, and how much it bothers her that they must wait. That she hesitated at all meant that, despite appearances, she cared if Isran would be painting a target on his own back without their help.

“That will just make this all the more dangerous,” she tells him, as if he doesn’t already know this.

“I’m aware. But,” he says, “by my count, Eres has now been in Coldharbour for over a week. What are the chances that something could have happened to her in that time? What are the chances that something could happen to her in the coming days, assuming we wait even longer to see if you and your mother can find a way to get us in undetected?”

Serana looks away, tensing.

“You know it as well as I do. The more time we waste here, the more likely it is that Eres won’t be alive when we find her.” Isran allows his voice to gentle, then, though it doesn’t stop Serana from going as rigid as stone, from her eyes flashing with pain and loss and pre-emptive grief. “The sooner you send us into Coldharbour, the better it is for her. I imagine we won’t be able to find her right away, anyways.”

Serana looks at him, and finally, she nods. “I’m not going to argue it if you want to go in there sooner,” she admits, and Isran nods, in perfect understanding with her. Serana has been on a razor’s edge since Inigo’s arrival. “But are you sure? With a few more days, we may find a way…”

“May.” Isran repeats. “You’re not sure if you can. So let’s get this over with. You get that portal ready, and the cat and I will prepare ourselves.”

Serana presses her lips together. For a long moment, she looks at Isran as though she wants to say something more. Isran holds her gaze, waiting, but Serana merely nods once more, then leaves him to himself.

Isran turns back to his bedroom. He has no personal effects here, has never bothered with them, but even so, this may be the last time he sees this room. It may be the last time he sees anything of Skyrim at all, if he is honest with himself. In the silence left behind by Serana's departure, he pulls his Warhammer from his back, and whittles the night away practicing his forms. He will need to be in top shape in Coldharbour—that much he is sure of.

* * *

Without the added complexity of having to come up with a way to hide their arrival to Coldharbour, the next morning finds Isran standing in his full armor, Warhammer on his back, Inigo beside him, across from the two Volkihar women deep in the vaults of Fort Dawnguard.

At one time, the storeroom had housed surplus armor and weapons, coinage, foodstuffs, even scrolls and other important documents. There is a row of depressingly empty shelves against one wall, with only a few scrolls and dust-covered books left among them. The only clutter in the room at all is the table near the entrance, littered with swords too old and rusted to be saved, set aside to be melted down, dented armor and torn leather – a not-quite-trash heap that Gunmar and Sorine had never quite gotten around to breaking down.

At one time, Isran may have been irritated at how very much a waste of space it all was. He could have put a training area in this room for when the weather was too poor even for him to force the men to train in it. He could have used this as some kind of stockpile. In fact, not so long ago, he’d considered using this as a dungeon, to house the captured vampires they might interrogate for information on where their nests might be. And perhaps, had Isran been a softer man, _perhaps_ he may have found himself that mage who claimed he could cure vampirism—just to see if it was possible.

As it is, however, Isran finds himself relieved that he had never gotten around to re-purposing this old store room. As it is, it has enough space and enough privacy that one could, in this case, summon a portal to Oblivion within it without alerting the other residents of the fort.

No need to cause a panic.

“Got everything?” Serana asks them both. Inigo nods eagerly beside him, bow in hand. That cat might have been naïve, a little flighty, but his dedication to retrieving Eres could not be called into question. Isran shrugs his shoulders, feeling the weight of his armor and hammer upon his back.

“That’s everything,” he confirms.

Serana nods. She hands Isran the horn. It’s a bit larger than a Vigilant’s Horn, Isran knows. Shaped differently, too. The Horn of Stendarr that Eres had carried—and he, too, once upon a time—had been smaller than this, perhaps just two hands-widths long from point to end. The horn he carries in his hand now, however, is nearly as long as his forearm with a deep, pronounced curve. Serana has already taken the liberty of winding a harness around it so that he might attach it to his belt, or carry it over his shoulder. The Horn would not have been an unusual sight in Jorrvaskr or a drinking hall perhaps, where one might find such horns, but it certainly looks odd on him.

“That horn isn’t always active.” Serana explains. “I imagine you still have some knowledge of magic? It will draw from you a bit when you use it to communicate with us.”

Isran lets out a single, dry chuckle. “Just who do you think you’re talking to, girl? I _was_ a Vigilant, once upon a time. I was never very skilled at magic, but,” he curls his hand around the horn, closer to the pointed end just beneath the curve. He can feel the magic in it drawing at him, just as it had the first time he'd held it. It is only barely enough to even be noticeable, and he may have missed it entirely if he had not had experience. “I know how these things work.”

Serana looks satisfied. “Good. I would avoid using it too often. We don’t know how much he will be able to sense you, and it’s better not to catch his attention if we can help it. We’ll do our best to guide you from here.”

“Which brings me to my next question.” Isran looks between the two of them. “How big _is_ Coldharbour? How exactly do you think we can find her?”

Serana glances at Valerica, but the woman only looks at her, silent. Sighing, Serana looks at Isran, though she glances fleetingly in Inigo’s direction. “Based on what _we_ know of Eres—and what Inigo saw, it’s apparent that Eres isn’t there by choice. She’s likely going to be trying to find a way out on her own. Which means, ideally, you _should_ be able to track her movement throughout Coldharbour. No matter what method she might find of escaping, she won’t be able to get out unless she takes down the barriers first.”

“Barriers?” Isran’s brow furrows. “What barriers?”

“Coldharbour is surrounded with several barriers,” Valerica explains. “These barriers have been in place for thousands of years. Its intent, of course, is to keep things _out_ , but it also serves the purpose of keeping things _in_ as well.”

“If there’s a barrier keeping things out, then how the hell am I going to get in there?”

“That’s where the portal comes in,” Serana explains. “If you had to come into Coldharbour normally, say, by crossing from one plane of Oblivion to another, then yes—you would be stuck behind the barrier. But, with the portal, we should be able to push that portal through a weak spot in the veil, allowing us to place you _inside_ the barrier.”

“Unfortunately,” Valerica adds, “once you are in, you will become part of Coldharbour—at least temporarily. As such, you will not be able to leave in the same way that you came. Essentially, think of the portal as a door that can only open outward. We can send you inside, to begin with—but the only way to allow the door to open in the _opposite_ direction, to get you and Eres out, will be to drop the barriers around the city. In doing so, not only will the barriers fall, but the veil in Coldharbour will be weakened, and so too will Molag Bal’s power over the realm itself. We will be able to force the rift inside once the barriers are down.”

“However,” Serana holds Isran’s gaze, eyes hard. “You have to be ready to leave once that portal is open. We won’t be able to hold the rift open for very long, even with the barriers down. And if you’re not there before it closes, it may be sometime before we can get another one open.”

“And by that time,” Valerica says, “Molag Bal may have already erected new barriers. Barriers that may be much harder to deactivate. Should you not wish to be stuck in Coldharbour much longer than you might like, I would advise not asking for the rift to be opened until you can be sure you will be able to reach it.”

“How long will the rift be open?” Isran asks, frown deepening. “Will it open far from us?”

“It should open practically on top of you, as long as you have the Horn on you.” When Isran looks at her, Serana explains, “That Horn doubles as a way for us to track your location, when we need it. It’ll serve as the beacon for the placement of the returning portal, when the time comes. I would suggest keeping a tight hold on it. As far as how long it might be open…” She looks at Valerica.

“Minutes,” Valerica says, voice tight with tension. “Perhaps less. Dropping the barriers will indeed allow us to create the rift to begin with, but it will also destabilize the realm. It will be… difficult, to maintain the rift with such dimensional instability surrounding it. Make sure you are able to enter it _immediately_ after it is opened to ensure no one is left behind.”

Isran nods. Deep in his chest, it feels as though his heart turns over. This doesn’t feel so much unlike it had walking into Castle Volkihar. Only then, he had had an army at his back. Now he only has himself. And a cat. 

“So, we’re ready, then.” Isran rolls his shoulders once more. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Wait.” From the table, Serana lifts a sword and its sheath into her hands, careful not to touch it anywhere but the leather that covers it. Even with the sheath acting to cover the gem that shines beneath, Serana holds it warily, far from her body. Isran accepts it, though holding it now is no different than it had been to hold it a few days prior.

It feels somehow _wrong_ to touch this blade, this blade that had been as much a part of Eres as her eyes, or her hair, or an arm or leg. Somehow, he feels as though he is touching something he does not have the right to touch.

“You should take this with you,” Serana murmurs, voice quiet. She steps back, away from the holy blade, but her eyes remain fixed upon it, even as those eyes grow distant. “It should…” She swallows. “It should help you, there. Most beings there will be undead, in a way. And,” Serana’s hands come together in front of her waist, clasping tightly together. “Eres will be glad to see it, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure she will be.” Isran tucks that sword into his belt, fastening it tightly. It’s a much lighter sword than it seems to have any right being. He feels like he just might fling it half across the room by accident if he tried to wield it himself, so used to his heavy Warhammer. “I’ll find her.”

Serana nods. “I’m counting on you.” Her eyes harden, then, sharp, burning with unspoken promise. “Don’t make me regret it, Isran.”

He smirks at her. “That’s my line.”

Isran expects that they will open the portal, then, but instead, Serana comes to him, clasps a hand around his arm, and pulls him aside. Her strength makes it so that even in all his armor and the added weight of his Warhammer, she very nearly tugs him right off his feet. He corrects himself, following her as she leads him to what could not have been counted as privacy by any definition, but far enough away that Valerica and Inigo could not have eavesdropped without being obvious about it.

“What’s this, then?” Isran pulls his arm back, frowning. It just isn’t _natural_ for a person, male or female, to be as strong as Serana is. As vampires are. She could bat him around like a toy if she wanted to, and the idea still doesn’t sit well with him, no matter how much he might have come around to tolerating her presence.

Serana doesn’t speak immediately. Her eyes cut across the room, to her mother, to Inigo, and her lips press tightly together, dark brow furrowing over too-bright eyes. In the dim lighting of the corner she’s pulled him into, they appear to burn crimson with inner light. He’s always found the sight unsettling. Another unhelpful reminder of just how unnatural she is, beneath her mostly human appearance.

She looks at him, then, and steps closer. She’s just an inch or so taller than himself, Nordic to her core, but in that moment, she seems to shrink, somehow appearing smaller, younger, an uncharacteristic fragility weaving about her like a shroud. She stares at Isran with eyes that are not quite soft, not quite imploring, but something near to it, like she can’t quite bring herself to allow those emotions to speak out loud, but to whisper, the very ghost of a whisper of a deeper emotion that he can only see with her nearness, that he might have missed entirely had she been further away from him.

“Bring her back to me, Isran,” she says, voice low, roughened. “You find her, and you keep her _safe_ until we can get her home.”

“That was the plan all along.” He lowers his voice to match hers, all the same. He and Serana don’t have much in common, that much is certain. One of the few things they did, perhaps, was that neither of them were comfortable with public displays of vulnerability.

This, he understands. This, he knows is hard for her. Especially that she is coming to _him_ , of all people. They may no longer be enemies, but they have never been quite what one would refer to as friends. He knows well how much it must have taken for her to reveal herself in this way to him, and there is a part of him that respects her for that.

“I mean it. You don’t—” Serana swallows. She looks away, eyes darting somewhere behind him and upward, somewhere just beneath the ceiling.

It strikes him, suddenly, that, had Serana have been human, she may have been biting back tears. Vampires could not cry, as mortals did. But they could certainly feel emotion. And the depth of Serana’s feelings for Eres could not have been argued. Even by him.

“I know,” he says to her. She looks at him, her expression tight, tight in reining her emotions in, bringing them to bear somewhere deep inside her. He knows what she means to say, what she could not say aloud. He had suspected it long ago. Perhaps he had suspected it even before _she_ realized it. “I know what she means to you.”

Serana’s chin raises, almost defiantly, as though she expects him to scorn her. As if she expects to be met with his disdain, his judgment.

Only a few months ago, Isran would have been exactly the sort of man who might have judged her. Who might have scorned her. Who might have looked at her and curled his lip, sneering at how a vampire could not _love_ as mortals did, at how a vampire could not even be worthy of a mortal’s love, even if they believed they felt it. He might have even taken joy in dissecting her in that way, in striking down her walls and reminding her exactly the kind of abomination she was, exactly the kind of abomination a _Vigilant_ could never have loved in return.

A few months ago, Isran had not met Serana.

He may not be sure about her mother, perhaps, but he is sure about Serana. She is not the monster he had grown to hate on principle. What she is, the vampire in her – that, he would still claim is against nature. She is the walking dead, and that will not change. But _who_ she is – that is entirely different. _Who_ Serana is, is not a monster.

She is just a person.

A person who cares. A person who can love. A person who feels love, just as Isran had, many years ago now. He recognizes the emotion in Serana as well as if he had looked into the mirror.

It is a quiet desperation, a fearful yearning. It is the look of someone who has watched their loved one walk into danger and is not sure that they will make it home. It is the same look his own wife had once given him, every time he had been called to tour when he had been a soldier. Every time he had assured her, every time he had made it home, and that had still never stopped her from looking at him as though she may never see him again.

That is the look that Serana wears now, only it is not a look that is meant for him. That fear, that desperation, as well hidden as it is behind her eyes, is for Eres. He knows that.

“I’ll find her.” He promises her. “You have my word.”

She says nothing else, but she nods, and together the two of them return to the group. From the short glance that Valerica gives Serana as they approach, Isran wonders if that woman knows. He wonders at how she could _not_ know. Perhaps that is the only reason why Valerica—a prickled thorn of a woman, by all respects—had offered her aid, where she might not have otherwise.

“Ready, I take it?” Valerica asks of them. “If you’ve any last words, now would be the time to say them.”

Inigo pauses. “Should Inigo have packed a coat?”

They look at him. Valerica lets out an especially forceful scoff, rolling her eyes. “There is no _weather_ in Coldharbour,” she huffs, as if they should have both known this, and then she turns to gather the ingredients she will need to begin the ritual.

“Remember,” Serana says to them. “Don’t call for the return portal until you _know_ you’ll be able to enter it immediately. Make sure you’re in a safe place when you call us.”

Isran nods.

“The city is on an island. We’ll drop you the Southern end—we think that’s likely where Eres was taken to begin with. The other areas are restricted to most of the inhabitants, so I can’t imagine she’d have been sent anywhere else.”

“Any idea where we should start looking?”

“The barriers,” Serana answers. “There should be four towers in each corner of the island. One of them should be pretty near to where you will arrive. If Eres has figured them out, which I think by now she might have, then she will likely have started moving to deactivate them.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“Eres might be an idiot, but she’s not stupid.” Isran raises a brow at this, half tempted to chuckle. “These aren’t like wards—the barrier itself should be visible, unless something’s changed since…” Serana bites her lip, her gaze averting for a moment. “The point is that, after over a week in there, she’s probably realized by now that there’s a barrier around the city. The Barrier Towers are also quite obvious, and we’ve encountered something very similar to them in the Soul Cairn, with the Gatekeepers.”

At this, Valerica nods. “Likely, she will have come to the conclusion that the towers are what fuel the barriers. It is a reasonable leap of logic, given that I myself was trapped behind a similar barrier in the Soul Cairn until she and Serana freed me. The barriers in Coldharbour should function similarly. If you find the Barrier Towers, you will likely also find sign of Eres. If you don’t find her herself.”

“And the first one is nearby?”

“Should be to the South.” Serana tells him. “One southeast, southwest, northeast, and northwest.” She frowns, then, brow furrowing. “I don’t think she’d be able to reach the others without dropping at least one, but I could be wrong…?”

“It’s not strictly necessary,” Valerica admits. “The Waterfront District is separated from the city outskirts via gate, not a barrier. It is possible that she may have missed the first barrier, and moved on to the next. Should the first barrier tower still be active, look instead to the north and east—you should be able to determine which of them she has visited.”

“And if I can’t?” Isran asks.

Serana’s brows lower. “Then look harder.”

Valerica, at long last, turns away from the pedestal. She hands a bowl almost as big as the one she herself carries to Serana.

“Unfortunately, summoning a gate to Oblivion is not as simple for us as it is for the Daedra.” Valerica moves, clockwise, in a large circle, tilting her bowl just enough that a steady stream of whitish, finely granulated powder pours onto the floor in a thick line. At the other side, Serana does the same, moving in the opposite direction to meet Valerica at the other end.

Once the large circle is closed, the two move to the interior of the circle, painting with the fine white powder a dizzying pattern of geometric lines and shapes that Isran could not have guessed the meaning of if he tried. They each end on opposite sides of the circles, stepping backwards outside of its perimeter as they draw the last lines to touch the edges from within.

Isran can feel the power in that shape, in the rune crafted on the floor in what he can only guess is the finely ground shavings of dozens, if not hundreds, of soul gems. He doesn’t want to know where they might have gotten so many of them. He is almost certain he is better off _not_ knowing.

Lastly, the two women draw twin daggers across their wrists, and from the shallow cuts, their blood drips in unison to mark the outer perimeter of the circle in one, concentrated area.

In stereo, the two women utter a phrase under their breath in what sounds almost like Alessian, but not quite. Perhaps it is a language older than he can imagine, spoken millenia before he had even breathed his first breath.

The ground trembles. The very air seems to vibrate. Preemptively, Isran lifts his hands and closes them over his ears just seconds before he hears the thunderous _clap_ of the air snapping open before them. On the other side, he can only see a dizzying swirl of incomprehensible images. He cannot tell what he might step into just by looking.

“Last chance.” Serana says to Isran. “If you’ve forgotten anything.”

Isran looks at that portal, and sighs. “Just my common sense,” he mutters, and he, against all logic and reason, steps inside the portal.


	3. Spiral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the same Coldharbour in ESO, this is the mod version.

ACT V  
CHAPTER III

COLDHARBOUR  
 _Waterfront District_

The first thing that Isran sees as the portal closes behind them is beige. In fact, almost everything that he sees seems to be beige. There is the ground beneath his feet, a mix of dry, hard-packed earth and finely ground sand that shifts when he steps on it. There is the sandstone brick of the ruins surrounding them; buildings half-buried beneath the earth.

They’ve appeared, it seems, somewhere a bit further removed from the mainstay of the area. In the distance, when he steps around the first of the ruined buildings, he can see a stone pathway of the same color of the ground beneath his feet, leading into what appears to be a small village. The buildings line either side of the stone path, short and squat, wider than they are tall, and the pathways themselves are conspicuously empty. He sees not a soul wandering them, not a soul anywhere within their immediate vicinity. He, and the cat beside him, seem to be the only living things present.

He hears Inigo make a disgusted noise, and turns his head to find the cat lifting his boot from the ground, shifting several steps to the left. Beneath where he had stepped, the end of what appears to be a sun-bleached bone pokes out of the sand. It is large enough to have once belonged to a human, or some other large animal. Isran tracks his eyes around them, and sees it is not the only evidence of the dead, left forgotten and half-buried by the sand. Against one of the buildings in the distance, he even sees an entire skeleton, half toppled over behind a low wall, arms laced around its knees like the person had died hugging themselves.

Not a good sign.

Isran pulls the horn from his belt, holds it just beneath the curve, and speaks lowly into its open end. “You sure you dropped us in the right place?” He asks, his eyes still sweeping all around him. “There’s nothing here.”

 _“Look for the barrier tower.”_ Is all that is offered from the tinny voice within the Horn, sounding half-whispered and distant, an airy tone that is difficult to hear without pressing his ear to the horn itself.

Isran turns his eyes skyward, searching the horizon. He still holds the Horn close to his face as he looks, unwilling to break the connection just yet. They are the only guides he will have within Coldharbour.

“What am I looking for?”

 _“A **tower** ,” _Serana huffs. _“You **have** seen a tower before, haven’t you?” _

Isran wishes the Horn could translate the image of his glare to her, but he knows it will not. He sees nothing on the immediate horizon, and so he turns, and behind him there is a set of stairs leading to a taller building. A building that reaches up, and up, and up further, until he must crane his neck all the way back just to see the top of it.

Absently, he puts the Horn back to his mouth. “I think we landed on top of it, actually.” He squints. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to see. “How can I tell if Eres has been here?”

_“Do you feel anything coming from it? Or see any magical energy?”_

Isran sighs. He can’t see anything from this angle – they’re too close. But, he could, it seems, walk up to it. He jerks his head in a beckoning nod to Inigo, and turns toward the stairs. He makes it up the first landing, then the second, and pauses.

There is a body, there, half draped over the stone railing that flanks either side of the stairway. Dressed in tattered crimson robes that look quite a bit fresher than the half-mummified corpse that resides within it, as though someone had found the corpse and dressed it. But this, Isran knows, is a land of the not-quite-alive, of the undead. It may be that this corpse has not been dead as long as it appears.

In which case, it would have been killed recently. Perhaps, Isran suspected, by someone who had a habit of dispatching the undead already. Perhaps, he suspected, someone whose name was Eres.

“Found a body.” He says to Serana. “Looks undead. Mummified. But the clothes don’t seem as old as the body would indicate. Thinking it might have been killed recently.” He crests the next stair, and pauses. “There’s a… well? Here? I think. Looks like a well, with… sand sculptures of people in them.”

His lip curls to look at it. It looks as though a few unlucky souls had gotten trapped in the sand within the well and had all risen out at once, grasping to escape, only to have been frozen and locked halfway through, locked in an eternity of reaching for a freedom they might never see.

“Oh.” Isran freezes, hearing the voice of a man. Just beside the well, half-hidden behind a pillar, is a man. A living man—or, someone who appeared to be living. He is moving, at least, and speaking, though his entire body is suited in plate armor, and the helmet he wears covers his entire face. “How unusual. Are you friends of the other one?”

Inigo darts forward at once. “You have seen Eres? She is this tall,” he demonstrates, holding his hand just above his shoulders, “with dark hair and grey eyes. And light brown skin.”

“I have,” the knight answers, seeming a bit confused by Inigo’s intensity. “It’s been some time, though,” he admits.

“How much time?” Isran asks. “When did you last see her?”

The man shrugs helplessly. “Don’t know. Some time ago. Yesterday, maybe? Last week?” He shrugs again. “After a few hundred years, it all seems to run together. I can’t tell anymore. But it’s been a while.”

Isran scowls at him. “Do you at least know where she went?”

“Into town, I imagine,” the knight offers. “There’s not anywhere else for her to go, after all.”

Isran hesitates a moment, considering something. “How did you know we knew her?”

“Well, you’re alive, aren’t you?” The knight asks, as if the answer should be obvious. “We don’t get many of your type here. Most of us were brought here after we died. So the ones who are still alive always stand out. The last one we got was… some time before the girl,” he muses. “Similar clothes, though. Do you suppose they might be related? Are _you_ related?” Isran gets the sense the man is frowning. “Ah. You’re not wearing the robes, though.”

“You saw another Vigilant?”

“Vigilant?” The man asks. “They’ve changed since I last saw them, I suppose. There was another one before her. A man—Breton, I think?” He shrugs. “He wore a mask over his face, and a hood. I didn’t see his face very well. Don’t know what happened to him, either. My apologies. I hope you find your friend.”

Isran, after a moment, brings himself to nod. “You said she’s in the town?”

“I said, I imagine that’s where she went.” The knight corrects him. “When she left here. If she’s still in the town, however, that, I do not know.”

Isran turns away from the man, stepping out of earshot, and pulls the Horn again from his belt.

“Serana. What am I supposed to be looking for at this Tower? How can I tell if it’s been deactivated?”

 _“You should be able to see the aura surrounding it, if it’s still fueling the main barrier,”_ comes Serana’s voice, immediately. _“The barrier around the city is visible, isn’t it?”_

Isran looks north, towards the skyline of the city that looked to only be a couple of miles away at most. “I can see something reddish,” he confirms.

It’s hard to see if he looks directly at it, but at the edges, he can _just_ see the reddish swirl of energy circling the entire city like a curtain.

_“And do you see anything like that from the Tower?”_

Isran looks over his shoulder, towards the well and the strange knight who stares aimlessly out at the wastelands in the distance. “No,” he says slowly, his eyes tracing the edges of the Tower, the walls, even looking upward where the spire rises above him. He sees no such magical font of energy.

 _“Then that tower must have fallen already.”_ Serana’s voice, distant as it is, sounds on the borderline of cautiously thrilled. _“I was **right**_ ,” she murmurs, and he’s not even certain that he’s meant to hear it. _“Eres is taking down the barriers, just like I thought she would.”_

Isran, too, finds himself smirking. _That’s a girl_ , he thinks silently. He had known that Eres would not have simply sat on her thumbs here. He had known, just as they all had, that she would not sit idly by to rot in Oblivion. Eres was looking for a way out.

And that meant he should be able to trace her. The barrier towers don’t move. If he heads towards them, he might just be able to find her at one of them—or at least find her trail.

First, however, he has to find a way out of this area.

Isran tugs Inigo along beside him. He pauses, just at the top of the steps of the tower, to look down upon the town. Even from here, so high up, he cannot see much of anything beyond the short, squat buildings, and the occasional red-robed half-undead warrior patrolling up and down the pathways. Even from here, he can see the reddish mummified skin of their faces, his theory confirmed.

Just to the north, he sees a great wall spanning the entire northern area of the small town. He _thinks_ there might be a gate down there, if Valerica’s information was still accurate, but from the angle they stand it, it’s impossible to see beneath the arch and tell whether or not the gate is open or closed.

Now with some amount of direction, Isran leads Inigo back down the stairs, back to level ground, and then further inward to the stone pathways and short buildings. One of them that he passes even has a little sign hanging over one of the doors like any store might have in Skyrim.

If there was any place that tended to see the most foot traffic, it was a store. Isran hopes the same can be said of stores even in Oblivion. He knows now that Eres _has_ been here, but he hopes he might be able to find out just how long ago this barrier had fallen. Perhaps, with luck, the residents here might know—and he might get some idea of just how far behind Eres they were. He beckons Inigo behind him, reading the sign’s name with some amusement: _Highwayman’s General Shop_. A bit mundane for a place like this one. 

The door swings open. There is little of note within the store itself – dusted bottles of unknown liquid that could have been anything from aged wine to sewer water, blunted knives and poorly-carved cutlery made of wood. The general shop, it seems, has leaned into the meaning of the name, and might have sold everything including the kitchen sink, if it had been able to procure one.

On top of the counter, slouched over, is a man, his entire face wrapped in cloth. His head raises when Isran enters, his shoulders rising defensively as his body tenses, but after a moment of looking in his direction, he relaxes. Isran has no idea if the man can actually see through the thick bandages or not. 

“What can I do for you, good sir?” The man asks, hopping lightly from the counter. Standing, he is only slightly shorter than Isran himself. His voice is low and a bit husky, but sounds like he could not have been older than middle-aged, beneath his strange, full-headed mask. “I offer only the highest quality items here.”

Isran eyes those items with some disdain. “Really,” he deadpans. His eye lingers especially on the dust-and-sand covered bottles. He wouldn’t trust whatever was in them if his life depended on it. “Unfortunately, I’m not here to shop. Just had a few questions for you.”

The man looks at him. His form tenses once more. “Whatever’s happening out there, I have nothing to do with it! All of my items were found on the lakeshore. I ain’t done nothin’!”

“Never said you did. Wanted to know if you’d seen someone. A Vigilant. A woman, with dark hair and—”

“That _bitch_ ,” the man growls out, his voice darkening. “Yeah, I’ve seen her! Karmic justice is what I call it. She’s the one who sent _me_ here—yeah, I know her _very well_.” Isran raises his brows at him. “It’s only right that her self-righteous, pompous little—” the man mutters under his breath several words that Isran doesn’t quite know the meaning of, but he is sure aren’t kind. “Bloody knife-ear.”

 _That word_ , however, Isran knows. He draws his blade, pressing its point at the hollow of the man’s throat.

“That _knife-ear_ ,” he says lowly, “is a friend of mine. I’ll ask you to mind your tongue in my presence.”

The man might have spat at him, had he not been wearing the mask. Instead, he simmers in his own anger, but bites his tongue. “What the hell do you wanna know?” The man asks him. “Ask your questions and _leave_ so I never have to see either of you ever again.”

“You’ve clearly seen her here,” Isran starts, and he lowers his sword to his side, but keeps it drawn. He doesn’t like this man one bit. “How long ago was that, and what was she doing when you saw her?”

“Same thing as you, asking stupid questions.” Isran’s eyes narrow at him. “She was trying to figure out how to get in the city, fuck if I know,” the man shrugs, almost violently. “I don’t care what she was doing.”

“And how long ago was that?”

He crosses his arms. Something about his posture looks smug. “Months ago.”

Isran’s breath stutters in his chest. “ _Months_?” He repeats, stunned. “You say it’s been _months_ since you saw her here?”

“That’s what I said.” The man confirms. “If you were trying to catch your friend, you’re too late.” Now he’s certain he can see the man smirking through his mask, the imprint of his lips curving against the thick fabric. “She’s long gone, and I ain’t seen her since. Hope she got eaten.”

“Eaten?” Inigo asks. “Who would eat her?”

“The Worm,” the man says, jerking a thumb towards the north wall of the shop. “He guards the front gate, eats anyone who comes close. Hope she got herself swallowed trying to get out of here. It’s what she deserves for what she did to me.” Isran’s brow creases, and the man scoffs. “Didn’t you know? I told you, she’s the one what killed me. Just because some old woman gouged out my eye! She killed me for the Stone!”

Isran shakes his head, sheathing the sword at his waist. There’s a part of him that wants to pull the Warhammer from his back, smash it right through the man’s skull. _Knife-ear_. He’d not heard that words in years, perhaps decades. Even in Skyrim, most never stopped so low. A man with that kind of visceral hate for a single race didn’t deserve to live, even in Coldharbour. Eres never killed anyone without reason. He’s sure more than ever that this man had deserved it, somehow.

But perhaps living here would be more torment than Isran could ever offer him.

Isran turns on his heel, barking the order for Inigo to follow, and the two of them leave the unnamed man in his failing shop behind them.

“To the gates, then?” Inigo asks. He shades his eyes with a hand as he peers into the distance to the north, but the buildings make it near impossible to see very far at all. “We might find Eres there.”

“Doubtful.” Isran’s mouth twists. “That man said he last saw her months ago, Inigo.” He moves, ducking into an alley to avoid the attention of a passing patrolman in those strange crimson robes. He’s not certain if they’re hostile just yet, but he doesn’t want to take chances.

And he has bad news.

He hates getting bad news. He hates giving it even more so.

“Serana.” He calls into the Horn again.

 _“Find something?”_ Serana’s responses, he notes, are always near-instantaneous, as soon as he calls to her. She must be sitting there, monitoring it, just waiting for him to reach out to her. He’s not surprised; he may have done the same thing in her position.

“Not Eres, unfortunately, but someone who met her.” Inigo peers out of the alley they've ducked into, squinting at something in the distance. Isran looks over his shoulder, but he can’t quite tell what the Khajiit is looking at. “Said he ran into her months ago, and hasn’t seen her since.”

For the first time since their arrival, there is a long, pregnant pause before Serana responds.

_“…Months, he said?”_

“That’s what he said.”

A longer, more strained silence. When a voice next comes from the Horn, it is not Serana, but Valerica.

 _“Time in planes of Oblivion does not flow as it does here, on Nirn. There may be a distortion between how quickly time moves there compared to how it may pass here, in the mortal plane. It is possible that it **has** been that long in Coldharbour since her arrival. To them,” _Valerica finishes.

Isran works his jaw, his mind whirling. “You’re saying Eres has been here for _months_ instead of just a week?”

 _“It’s possible,”_ Valerica confirms. _“Though I cannot confirm it from here, of course.”_

“Of course,” he mutters, shaking his head. Just what they needed. More complications. “If she’s _months_ ahead of us, it’s going to take a lot longer to catch up with her. She’s got more of a lead than we ever expected her to have.”

 _“Perhaps,”_ Serana speaks again, though her tone sounds distant, distracted. Bothered. He can’t blame her. He hasn’t even wrapped his _own_ mind around it, yet. _“But now we know what to expect. You’ll have to move faster to catch up with her. Try the gate first—I’m sure if she’s been there that long, she’s found a way past it. She must have headed for one of the other Barrier Towers_.”

Isran hardly needs her to tell him that. “On our way,” he tells her, and drops the Horn to his hip once more.

Inigo at his side, Isran ducks back out of the alley into the main street, and he follows that stone path as it winds northward through the small, ramshackle village that has sprung around it. The further into the small village he gets, the more people he sees— _if_ one could have called them that.

“What is wrong with them?” Inigo asks, in a hushed whisper. “Will Eres look like that when we find her?”

“She’d better not,” Isran mutters, eyeing one of them as they pass. Each and every one of the residents of the village they had seen were little more than skin and bone, what little skin they had reddened and pockmarked, drawn tight against their skeletons so that they looked hardly more than mummies, like Draugr who had somehow managed to keep their skin.

Worse still, not a single one of them had eyes. Instead of eyes, they had one large, gaping hole cut across where their eyes might have been, as though someone had simply taken a scoop and shoveled out all of the flesh from one side of their faces to the other. Though they had no eyes to see with, and hardly moved at all, they each raised their heads as they passed, vocalizing rasping growls and hisses that could have once been words, for all Isran knew.

He ignores them all, walking briskly past them, and in their wake, the mummified residents drop their heads once more and go still. They seemed only to react to proximity; as still as statues unless they ventured too closely.

The stone path gradually faded into dirt and packed earth, and then rose into a steep incline that led to a gate up above to the north.

A gate, Isran realizes with not a small amount of satisfaction, that is wide open, its barred portcullis drawn high.

Just near that gate, a knight stands in brilliantly shining armor of a bronzed golden color, the helmet reminiscent of the head of a dog, with two red gems for eyes and a mane made of spiked metal. That knight raises his head as they approach, arms crossed over his chest, and makes no move to impede them.

“Newcomer…” He greets them as they approach, his voice warm and almost friendly, casual. “You both are full of life, as well, it seems.” He regards them both curiously, or Isran assumes so, unable to see his face as he is. “Strange times, these are…” he muses.

“You’ve seen another like us, then, I assume,” Isran says. “Who are you?”

“You may call me Sir Juncan,” the knight says. “I have seen another like you, yes. Some time ago. Recently, perhaps.”

“Was it ‘some time ago’, or was it ‘recently’?”

“Both,” Sir Juncan answers, shrugging. “I have seen her some time ago. I have also seen her recently. They are not mutually exclusive.”

Isran holds back a sneer. He must be _nice_ to these vexing people, or he may not ever get any information from them. “And how recently did you see her?”

Sir Juncan shrugs again. “Recently enough. Well, last I saw her. Better than the other Vigilant, at least. Not as weak, it seems.” When Isran frowns at him, Sir Juncan adds, “The first Vigilant who came here didn’t fare so well against Menta Na.”

“Menta Na?”

“The flying Daedroth that guarded this place.” Sir Juncan tells him. “He used to eat everyone who came close. That girl you’re looking for—she killed him and opened the gate. Perhaps she meant to avenge the first.”

Isran doubts very much that was the case. He can’t be sure, of course, but if there’s another Vigilant who had been sent to Coldharbour, he’s almost certain it had been the corrupted Altano. “And how long ago was this gate opened? Was it months ago, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” Sir Juncan answers. “It is nice to be able to walk around again. I was getting bored of the Waterfront.”

Isran sighs, pinching at the bridge of his nose. Were all the inhabitants of this place so vague? Why could they not simply say what they meant? Were they all simply placed here to vex him, specifically?

“Did you at least see where she went?”

“North.” Sir Juncan, for once, answers him plainly.

North—that lined up with what Serana had said about the Barrier Towers. There should have been two to the North, to either side of the island. “One last question.”

“Ask away,” Sir Juncan, if nothing else, is at least amicable. Pleasant.

“The people in this town—why have they been mummified?”

“Mummified? Hardly.” Sir Juncan scoffs. “They’re plague victims, don’t you know?”

“Plague?” Inigo half yelps the word, jumping in place. “There is a _plague_?”

“The Thrassian Plague,” Sir Juncan confirms. “I’d avoid the water, if I were you. Rots you from the inside out. And then you keep rotting. The worst of them don’t even look human anymore.”

Isran’s lips press together. ‘Thrassian Plague’ sounded familiar for some reason, but he couldn’t quite place it in his memory. Where had he heard of that before?

“What about the robed men?” Inigo asks suddenly. “The ones in red.”

“The Alessians?” Sir Juncan asks him, and Isran nearly swears. “I’d avoid them, too, were I you. They aren’t too fond of your friend, at least. If you want to find her, follow the bodies.”

Isran’s brows raise at that, but he must admit that he is vaguely impressed. He should not have been surprised that Eres would have left a trail of undead behind her.

The Alessians—he may not remember exactly what the Thrassian Plague is, but he remembers the Alessian Empire. The First Empire of Cyrodiil, under St. Alessia. One couldn’t so much as sneeze in Tamriel without having learned of that particular slice of history. He could only just vaguely remember that a plague had near crippled the Empire many thousands of years ago.

But why, then, would that plague still be a factor in Coldharbour?

He thanks Sir Juncan for his information, and he and Inigo continue through the opened gate.

They meet a woman just past that gate, a woman whose eyes have been hidden beneath a blindfold. When they ask her of Eres, she, too, claims to have met her—and that Eres had offered to help find the graves of her family. But she, like all the others who had seen Eres, had not seen her in some time, and could not have told him where she went.

They continue forward, following the long, winding roads of stone that surround the city proper. The gate had not opened into the city itself, but merely the outskirts of it—the city, Isran sees, is further toward the center, and he sees, too, that red shimmering of the barrier still raised around it. There would be no entering it until the barrier dropped, and he would have to find Eres first.

Following the Northern path of the stone road means following, as Sir Juncan had suggested, a veritable trail of undead bodies, slain and left to rot where they had fallen. Their bodies do not look particularly old, though covered in dust and grime as they are, and the further they travel northward, the more of them they see. At first there is only the occasional resident—plague victims, Isran expects, almost all of whom bear no armor and barely any weapons, but have been slaughtered all the same. Further still, there are the crimson-robed Alessians, killed and left behind in much the same manner, though they often had armor and weaponry that the plague victims had not. Eres had killed them all, indiscriminately, on her journey northward.

They do not encounter another living soul on their path, and Eres is to blame. Isran feels no sympathy for these souls, even slain as they are. He knows that they, being residents of Coldharbour, had probably been the exact kind of people he himself might have slain on Nirn. That Eres had been so resolute in killing each one she came across only allowed them a clearer trail to follow.

Isran hopes, soon enough, that the bodies they encounter will freshen as they close the distance between them and the one they seek so readily.

FORT DAWNGUARD  
 _Vault Chamber_

Serana sits, head in her hands, skull aching with a headache she had not even known she could get.

Months.

_Months._

Eres had been in Coldharbour for _months_ , and they’d only just been able to get Isran and Inigo inside. Months, Eres had been alone in that place. Months, Eres had endured Coldharbour on her own.

Months, Eres had been under Molag Bal’s thumb.

No. It’s worse than that.

Eres had been under Molag Bal’s thumb for over a year. He’d only just finally managed to take her for his own.

Serana does not eat as mortals do, but her stomach roils all the same. Molag Bal had taken Eres from Nirn, dragged her into Coldharbour against her will—and now here they are, _months_ behind her, hoping desperately that Eres has not been killed in the meantime, or worse.

Or worse.

Serana has known pain. She has spent much of her waking life in it. She has known anguish, she has known grief, she has known that raw, searing hurt that makes it feel like someone has torn you open at the chest and dug around inside and turned everything upside down.

She knows it. She knows it well.

Nothing, _nothing_ she has experienced could ever have prepared her for this.

Eres. _Her_ Eres, in Coldharbour.

In the place of her nightmares.

Taken by the same horror that had ruined her life—that had ruined her family. Taken by the same horror that had ruined _her_.

Whenever she thinks of it, she feels violently ill. She doesn’t quite remember what being sick feels like, anymore, it being that she had not been sick since she had been mortal, thousands of years ago, but she imagines it must feel something like this. Something like being unable to control your own body. Something like being unable to control the endless spiral of your thoughts.

Something that feels like the ghost of heat beneath her skin but also the coldest of ice, something that feels like a knife in the heart and the scorching pain of silver, something that feels like Serana would rather sleep for an eternity than to bear that pain for even another second.

Something that makes Serana remember Eres in flashes, in half-images and the fleeting memories of sounds—of her voice, of her laugh, of the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled. Of the searing heat of her skin when Serana touched her, of her unending courage in the face of danger, of her recklessness and strength of heart.

Of her, of her, of her.

Serana groans, slapping her hands against her face, dragging them against her eyes as if she might pull the images from her mind.

That’s settled it.

She’s going to go mad, sitting here. She’s going to lose her fucking mind.

She spent _millennia_ in a glorified _coffin_ , and instead, what’s going to drive her to insanity isn’t thousands of years in a box, but the torturous minute by minute wait of listening for news from Isran, of hoping and praying and yearning for news of Eres’ well-being.

“Sitting here staring at it won’t make the time pass any faster.”

Serana lets out another groan, louder this time.

If the endless spiraling thoughts of Eres don’t drive her mad, her mother certainly will.

“I _know_ that, Mother.”

“You should hunt.” Valerica states firmly. She appears in Serana’s vision as she steps into her line of view, arms crossed over her chest, expression closed and half to scornful. Serana _hates_ that look. Serana hates that look because it’s the way her mother looks at her when she’s being petulant and childish.

She’s _not_. She needs to _be here_. “I’m fine.”

“You’re pulling apart at the seams,” her mother tuts, with a marked amount of disdain in her voice. Her distaste for Eres is an unspoken Known between them, but even her mother knows that Serana has limits. She will not speak of it openly. “Hunt, and you will be better prepared for what news may come.”

Serana knows what that means. She knows what her mother is getting at. She’s not stupid. She’s just going to pretend it doesn’t exist. Because it doesn’t.

It’s not a possibility.

Serana refuses to let it be one. Eres won’t die in Coldharbour. Eres _can’t_ die in Coldharbour. _Eres_ was Eres. If there is anyone who could be dragged into Coldharbour against her will and somehow turn that against Molag Bal and make him regret it—it would be her. Eres is capable of anything.

Eres is capable of surviving there, that Serana is sure of.

She _has_ to be sure of it. She can’t allow herself to consider otherwise.

“I’m staying here.” Serana does not look at her mother. She does not need to, to feel the disapproving look the woman gives her. She’s well aware of how Valerica feels about the situation.

Valerica has offered more than once to monitor the Horn so that Serana might take time to herself to recuperate, to hunt, to work off her frenetic stress.

Serana, of course, has refused.

She will _not_ be stepping away from the Horn, thank you very much. She wants to be there when they find Eres. _When_ they find her, not _if_. She _has_ to be there when they find her. She needs to know that she’s alive. She can’t see her, through the Horn, but if Serana could just hear her voice…

If she could just have confirmation that she’s _fine_ , she would be able to breathe again. _Then_ she could hunt. But only then.

Not before. Not even a second before then.

Serana will stay. Her mother can choke on her scorn and her disapproval and her _Serana don’t be so stubborn_ words and looks and everything else. Her mother _doesn’t understand_. How could she, when _she_ had married a man like Harkon? She could never understand the way Serana feels. Valerica had probably never loved Harkon a day in her life.

Even if she had, she hadn’t loved him the way Serana—

Serana shakes her head. Now’s not the time.

She tells herself that, every time. Now’s not the time to be thinking about that. There are bigger things to worry about. We don’t even know if she’s alive yet.

And even still, her mind circles back on a constant loop.

 _She loves her, she loves her, she loves her_.

And she’d never gotten to tell her.

So no, Serana will not consider the possibility that Eres may not be alive. Serana will not consider that it is a possibility at all. Because it can’t be. Because she _has_ to be alive. Because Serana still needs her. Because Eres has to live, so that she can come back to her.

Eres has to live, so that Serana can love her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more on Coldharbour: I know that you start in Coldharbour in ESO and it looks quite different from the way it's described here, so if you've played it and you're ???? it's because I'm using the mod's version instead. I did consider trying to shift things but Coldharbour's design in the mod is pretty central to the storyline so I left it as is. 
> 
> Don't know of any actual racial slurs within Skyrim, so I just borrowed from Dragon Age. 
> 
> Serana POV is also going to be a lot more common from here on out so I hope you guys enjoy it. It's nice to step in her head again since we haven't seen it since Act 3.


	4. Cold Trails

ACT V  
CHAPTER IV  
COLD TRAILS

COLDHARBOUR  
 _City Outskirts_

Coldharbour seems to be an endless expanse of nothingness and dreary visuals. After several hours of walking the winding stone paths surrounding the city proper, he has grown especially tired of seeing nothing but sand, and stone, and sandstone. Was it Molag Bal’s goal simply to bore him to death?

Beside him, Inigo suddenly draws his bow.

Frowning, Isran reaches for his own hammer, following Inigo’s gaze, and pauses.

An old man—or something that may have once been a man—approaches them, shuffling toward them at a slow, ambling pace, his hands clasped mildly behind his back. Isran keeps his hand near to the hilt of his hammer, but does not yet draw it from his back as the man approaches.

“You,” the man says. His face is horrifically disfigured, not the reddened, pockmarked, tightly drawn skin of the plague victims and other Alessians they had come across, but rather seeming as though something alien had grown out of his face and gotten stuck there half to freeing itself. It looks almost as a squid has grown out of his face, its tentacles draping down in odd, stiff growths that do not move even when he speaks. And he _does_ speak, even without a visible mouth.

“You are _not_ supposed to be here,” that man hisses at them, voice low and grating. “What have you come here for? What do you hope to accomplish in this place? Go back to the village and wait for your end with all the others!”

Isran relaxes. He drops his hand, moving instead to cross his arms over his chest. This is just some batty old man, not someone that could have posed a danger to them.

“What do you want, old man?” He asks it.

“That is _Inquisitor Pepe_ to you,” the squid-faced man snaps back at him. “And what I _want_ is for you to go back where you came from!”

“And we will,” Isran promises. “As soon as we find our friend.” He narrows his eyes at the squid-man when he sees that half bent-over posture stiffen at the mention. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you. An elf, shorter than me. A shade or two lighter skinned.”

It’s near impossible to read this _Inquisitor Pepe’s_ expression, being that he has none, but the not-tentacles erupting from his face do seem to stiffen along with the rest of him.

“Perhaps I have,” Inquisitor Pepe tells them shortly. “Not that I would tell you. _She_ is supposed to be here. _You_ are not. So leave! Turn back the other way and go home!”

Isran’s brow furrows. He looks at Inigo, who shrugs helplessly. “What do you mean, she’s _supposed_ to be here? Because Molag Bal brought her here?”

Pepe scoffs. “ _Everyone_ is here because of Molag Bal. She is supposed to be here because she is supposed to be here. It is what she is meant to do. You are not meant to do anything, and you are _certainly_ not meant to interfere with her. Turn around, go back from whence you came, and perhaps you might manage to live a _mostly_ peaceful life here before the end!”

“Answer me, old man.” Isran has never been a man of incredible patience. This Pepe is wearing away quickly at what little he has. “What exactly do you think Eres is _meant_ to do here?”

Pepe scoffs. “You think I would tell you, just so you could go and try to stop her?” He shakes his massive head. “I am old,” he says, “not stupid. You are only courting your deaths if you follow her.”

Pepe barks at them once more to leave, but when Isran turns away from him, the man mutters under his breath and wanders away all the same, without causing more problems. In his wake, Isran turns his eyes upon Inigo.

“I don’t suppose you have any idea of what that meant.”

“Inigo?” Inigo asks, and shakes his head. “Inigo has no idea what he was talking about. He thinks maybe that man is just crazy.”

“Maybe…” Isran isn’t sure that he believes that.

That man had been an Alessian. Or, at the very least, he had been dressed like one, like all the others. He had noticed that the Alessians seemed to be the ones holding the power in this place—they were the only corpses he had come across that had ever had any form of weaponry on them. The plague victims, had they weapons at all, were fashioned from wood and stone, not iron or steel. It was also the Alessians who had been patrolling the first town they had landed in, back in the Waterfront District, and, he imagines, who had once patrolled these roads before Eres had killed them.

So why, then, would this Alessian have been adamant that Eres not be interrupted? Surely, this Pepe had seen just how many of his brethren that Eres had killed. Shouldn’t he then wish for Eres to be stopped, to leave as quickly as she had come? Shouldn’t he then _want_ Isran to find her, so they could all leave together?

But Pepe seemed quite the opposite. Pepe seemed to believe that Eres had some kind of purpose here, in Coldharbour, and whatever that purpose was, he seemed to believe it well enough that even the deaths of his brethren did not seem to matter to him. Just what could be so important, so monumental, that a man would ignore the slaughtering of his own people?

Or, perhaps, was this Pepe not on the side of the Alessians, at all? Could it be that he was firmly in Eres’ court, on _their_ side of the equation, and took some satisfaction in watching her wreak havoc?

Perhaps, Isran considers, this Inquisitor Pepe _wants_ Eres to bring down the barriers, as she is seemingly aiming to do, for some unknown reason.

But what reason might a resident of Coldharbour have for _wanting_ it to fall? Was there something Pepe wanted inside the city proper that he could not get if Eres did not drop the barriers?

But why, then, did it have to be _Eres_ who did it? Couldn’t anyone have taken the barriers down before now? Couldn’t _Pepe_ have done it, if that’s what he wanted?

“Whoa,” Inigo said, as they approached a set of stairs leading upward. “This place is much bigger than Inigo thought it would be.”

Isran hums under his breath, climbing the stairs alongside him. His mind still runs over the encounter with Pepe. Something about that man did not sit right with him, and he’s certain it has something to do with Eres.

* * *

FORT DAWNGUARD  
 _Vault Chamber_

Two days. 

Isran and Inigo have been in Coldharbour for two days now, in _their_ time, and they have not yet found Eres. They have found signs of her passage, of course, seemingly everywhere they go—an endless trail of the bodies of the inhabitants of Coldharbour, everything from the red-robed Alessians to the poorly armed plague victims to leeches to scorpions to, most recently, undead hounds, scattered near the roadside.

Serana waits, for Isran to make contact. Though they have agreed that Isran should only contact them when necessary in the off chance that Molag Bal might somehow be able to sense what magic resides in that horn, Serana waits impatiently all the same. She wears the matching pendant upon her neck, allowing her to speak with them, but she sets the Horn in front of her, waiting to hear something Isran might have to tell her.

For a time, she did leave the table—but she had only to pace, wearing a groove into the stone floor of the vault chamber, and she had carried that Horn in her hands the entire time.

Now, Serana waits again, perfectly still, her mind drifting, turning over itself, spiraling from one end of the spectrum to another.

There is the defeatist part of her, the pessimistic, the fear, the paranoia—there is the part of her that can only think of the worst case scenario, that can only fear that the worst has happened, that Eres has died, or become further Corrupted, or worse, that Molag Bal has taken special interest in her even after she has been dragged into Coldharbour. That is the worst thought of all, and one that Serana’s mind keeps returning to as thoughts of Coldharbour bring to mind her own experiences, and those serve only to worsen her fears about Eres’ wellbeing.

When those thoughts rile her, she turns her mind on a pivot, shifting it deliberately, thinking of lighter things, of happier things, of both times long past and times—she hopes—are yet to come. She remembers the growth of her feelings for Eres and she can’t even quite pinpoint when it started, even when she tries, only that one day, Eres had been a trusted friend and confidante, and the next, she had not been able to imagine herself living without her. She remembers the ease with which they connected, the comfortable banter that had always left Serana feeling lighter when she was near, the way that Eres had scowled at her on the walls that day, just before they’d gone to face her father.

She remembers their farewell, just weeks ago, now, on the shores of the coastline near the castle that had once been her home. She remembers the dark sand beneath her feet, the chill of the air, the smell of salt on the wind.

She remembers the way the snow had fallen around them, lighting upon Eres’ dark hair, the way it melted so much more quickly on her than it did on Serana. She remembers the soft brush of white snow against dark lashes, the wet glisten as they melted, the caress of those lashes against bronzed skin, framing eyes that shone blue-grey even in the night.

Serana remembers looking at her, then, as they said their goodbyes, and wanting desperately to kiss her.

It had been a startling thought, at the time.

It had not been the first time, of course, that Serana’s mind had betrayed her. The first time Serana could remember feeling that way for Eres, the first time she can remember _consciously_ finding herself distracted by the bow of Eres’ lips—that had been on the battlements of Fort Dawnguard, just before the final battle.

Serana has thought of that moment, since then, and she thinks the feelings were there before that, yes—but that had been the first time _she_ had realized it, consciously, the first time she had looked down at Eres and wondered what her lips would taste like. It had been too much, in that moment, and Eres had been—she had been Eres, in all that she was, and Serana could not look at her for wanting her, and so Serana had deflected, she had pushed Eres back to a distance in her own way.

Eres had taken that bait, played along, and Serana had watched her leave with not a small amount of dread sinking low into her stomach.

For Serana had never felt love, before. Not _this_ kind of love, anyways, though she might not have known that’s what it was, back then. That had taken careful rumination. Not because Serana did not know what love was, but merely because she had not yet experienced it for herself, had not even so much as seen it for her own eyes. She could not have said she had ever seen love from her parents. If she ever had, she could not remember it.

The depth of that feeling was scary. The breadth of it. That was to be expected.

The force of her attraction to Eres was scarier.

 _Is_ scarier.

Serana is still afraid of it, a little. Somewhere deep down, there is a part of her that feels dirty, for thinking of her friend in such a way. A part of her that feels guilty, like she’s soiled it. A part of her that feels undeserving, unworthy, un _fit_ for this.

She’d never been interested in women before. She’d never been interested in men, either, now that she thinks of it. She’d never been interested in _anyone_ , had never seen the appeal of the _baser_ instincts that she had seen some of the clan engage in. Having a bedservant for warmth was one thing—Serana could almost understand that, for all she would not have invited anyone to her bedroom herself, thrall or no. But anything _else_? She could not wrap her mind around that, inviting someone to you willingly, asking for that kind of invasion and _wanting it_. She’d scoffed at the thought of it, once, rolled her eyes at the romances she encountered in books, at the breathlessness and the dramatics and all that it entailed.

Poetics, she had figured, made drama of everything. They exaggerated things to make it beautiful. Or what they thought was beautiful. Serana had thought it overbearing. Irritating, even. It may as well have been nonsense, to her. None of it had made any sense. Her parents certainly had never acted in such a way around each other. Neither had any other coupling within the clan.

Mortals were just _strange_ , Serana had figured. They must function differently than them. Perhaps it’s because their lives are so short, that they must have something so flighty and silly to bring some kind of excitement into such a short period of time, to make the living worthwhile. It seemed a rather poor trade to her.

But then she had stood on that wall with Eres, and Eres had embraced her—not for the first time, mind you, but it was the first time Serana had recognized the feeling in her for what it was.

Attraction. And something deeper, something more monumental, something that might have stolen her breath away from her had she breath to give.

Serana had told herself, on the shore of her island home, that she would wait. She has no idea what attraction looks like in mortals, after all, having only her clan to use as a baseline, and so she would wait, and she would watch, and she would _hope_ that it was not just her.

When next they met, Serana had told herself, she would pay more attention. If she could just be _sure_ that Eres felt the same, then—then maybe they could navigate it together. Whatever it was.

Serana had bet that they would meet again, someday soon, after Eres had finished her business with the Vigilants and Serana had returned her mother to Skyrim. When she and her mother had returned to her mother’s laboratory, Valerica’s first steps on Nirn in millennia, it had taken everything in Serana not to leave her immediately.

She could not have gone to Eres, then, not when her mother needed her. Not when she was doing Vigilant work.

And so she waited.

For a time, her mother seemed determined to bring the castle back to working order—to clean the mess Harkon had made of it, to make it a functioning home again. Only after every shadow around every corner reminded both of them sorely of the man whose shadow they had lived under for so long had Serana been able to convince her mother that they should instead move to the Dawnguard—at least, she argued, until they found someplace else they could make a new home in.

Just a week following their arrival, Inigo had shown at the door.

And he may as well have dropped a cannonball in her lap.

Eres was gone, Molag Bal had taken her, and he needed their help to get her back.

And now here Serana is, waiting by the Horn, waiting for news that Eres might still be alive. _Is_ still alive. So that she can count down the minutes and hours until Eres is returned to her, until she can examine whatever it was that had been between them. Until Serana can _understand_ what “it” is. What it all meant. What it all might mean, in the future.

If they have a future, the darker part of her mind murmurs.

 _When_ they have a future, she corrects, consciously. She may be a realist about most things. She would rather be an ignorant optimist about this. She can be nothing else but optimistic.

_“Serana.”_

Serana straightens, snatching the horn from the table. “Isran?”

 _“We’ve reached some kind of plaza,”_ Isran tells her. _“It doesn’t seem like the sun sets here, but I think… I think another day has passed. We’re going to rest the night here in the plaza—it looks like Eres has cleared it out. We met some old man that…”_ For a moment, silence, as if the man is parsing his words carefully. _“He seems to think Eres belongs here. Or that she’s meant to **do** something here. He wouldn’t say what—only that we shouldn’t interfere. Do you have any idea what he could have meant?” _

Serana frowns, looks to her mother. Valerica’s frown is just as deep as her own, just as uncertain. “I have no idea,” she answers him. “Did he say anything else?”

_“Not much. But I’ve been thinking… How long has it been for you, there?”_

Her frown deepens. “Two days. How long has it been for you?”

A long pause.

Then, _“Two days.”_

“Wait…” Serana’s brow furrows sharply. “You said that Eres had been there for months.”

_“That’s what they said. Multiple people claim to have seen her months ago.”_

“But that’s not possible.” Serana looks to Valerica. “ _Is it_? If there’s a time distortion, shouldn’t it be universal, around the whole island? Why do _our_ times match, but not Eres’?”

“It could be simply that they are not yet _part_ of Coldharbour, truly,” Valerica says slowly. Serana’s eyes narrow at her tone. She knows that tone. Her mother knows something. Something that she’s not saying out loud. “Perhaps the distortion only takes effect for those who have been…absorbed, into the essence of Coldharbour, so to speak. Someone who, for example, _belongs_ there.”

“So you think that Eres being invited there by him is the reason why her time is distorted, but not Isran’s?” Serana presses.

Her mother nods, wordlessly. She doesn’t look at her.

 _“I don’t know enough about time distortions to argue that,”_ Isran mutters on the other end. _“But I know it seems like we haven’t been making much progress. Her trail is easy to follow, but it could be weeks, or days, or even hours old and I might not be able to tell the difference. Everything looks the same here.”_

Serana bites her lip. She hates to hear him talking like that. About Eres.

“Just keep heading toward the next Tower,” she tells him. “If there’s any place that will have a definite sign of her, it’s going to be there.”

_“We’ll continue on in the morning.”_

Serana bids him and Inigo goodnight, and lowers the Horn to the table. Valerica, as she expected, hovers nearby, arms folded over her chest and lips pressed tightly together, brow furrowed in deep thought.

“Mother.” Valerica looks up at her, snapping out of her reverie. “What’s bothering you? There was something you didn’t want to tell them.”

“What Isran said of that man…” Valerica purses her lips. “He is correct about one thing. There is something about this that does not feel right. There is something we are _missing_.”

“Such as…?” Serana asks. “You don’t think Eres is actually meant to _stay_ there, do you?”

“…No,” Valerica says slowly. “However. There may be another purpose for her being there. What that purpose may be, I am unsure of, but that a resident of Coldharbour would be so insistent that Isran not _interfere_ with her task—I cannot help but wonder what he believes that task may be.”

“Bringing down the barriers, maybe?” Serana wonders, shrugging. “Perhaps he wants to get into the city, too.”

“Or perhaps,” Valerica says quietly, “he wants to bring them down for some other reason. There must be more to this that we are not seeing.”

“What does it matter? The barriers are going to come down either way. And they _have_ to come down so that we can get her out. If it just so happens that our interests happen to align with someone else’s there, then that’s one less person who we have to worry about is trying to kill them.”

“Perhaps,” Valerica says again. “But consider this, Serana: Why, if this person wanted the barriers taken down so badly so as to warn Isran away from Eres, did he not drop them on his own? Why, then, would he simply _wait_ for Eres to do so?”

“Cowardice,” Serana offers. “Maybe he was just waiting for someone to come around that wouldn’t shy away from pissing off Molag Bal.”

“Possible,” Valerica admits, but she still doesn’t seem convinced. “But I don’t believe that, _and_ the matter of the time distortion, are a coincidence.”

“You have a theory on that, too?”

“I do, but I won’t know for sure until Isran closes the distance with Eres. I believe there may be an entirely different explanation for the difference in the passage of time being Isran and Eres.”

“Which would be?”

Valerica’s mouth twists, her brow creasing. “I do not want to speak of it until I am sure. There is no reason for me to worry you further.”

Serana’s own brow snaps downward, low over her eyes. “What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It means that it may be nothing. Worry not, Serana.” Valerica comes to her, pats her shoulder gently. It is the closest to a full-on embrace Valerica might have come. “My second theory is a far-fetched one, unlikely to be true. We will cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Serana’s frown only deepens as she watches her mother walk away.

No matter what Valerica says, she doesn’t like the sound of that. Her mother hiding things was _never_ a good thing.

The last time her mother had hid something from her, she’d wound up in a tomb for four thousand years. She has more than enough right to be suspicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk man serana kinda gay


	5. Inhibition

ACT V  
CHAPTER V  
INHIBITION

COLDHARBOUR  
 _Alessian Entrance Plaza_  
  


In the morning—or what Isran could only guess was the morning, given that the sun never sets in Coldharbour—he and Inigo collect themselves, and in short order, remove themselves from the small, hidden nook they had hidden themselves in for the night to rest and enter the plaza proper.

They have still not caught up to Eres, though her trail remains everywhere they look. Today, again, as they had yesterday and the day before that, and as they would until they found her, they would follow that trail wherever it may lead. Eres could be anywhere within this plane, and they must search wherever they can.

Eres, whose trail he can see leading away from the landing at the top of the stairs—the landing that spans almost as wide as the main keep of Fort Dawnguard, an expansive plaza that looks as though it may have once been used as some kind of ceremonial procession or gathering area, it was so big.

Just down the stairs, in the center of it, Isran can see a statue of a woman in a long dress, hand held out beseechingly, and at either side of her there are two skeleton figures, each holding a staff, their heads bowed. Past her, in the distance, there is a long bridge, with something whitish on the other end, and at either side of that bridge’s entrance, there is the crumpled forms of two knights in plated armor, struck down where they had once stood guard. If he turns his head in the other direction, there are more stairs leading upwards towards a door several stories tall, it seems—a door that rests behind the barrier that still rises around the interior of the city.

Isran turns back to the bridge. He doesn’t see a Tower there, but it is clear that Eres had been there, had gone there for some reason. Perhaps, if he follows that trail, he might find Eres—or, at the very least, someone else who had seen her more recently who would have more information.

Isran takes the stairs downward, and it takes him nearly ten full minutes just to cross the expanse of the lower plaza. It must have been nearly half a mile at its longest point, from the entrance of the bridge to the stairs he had descended from. It is less wide than long, but even so, he imagines it would take him several minutes to cross its width, as well. Statues line the edges of the walkway, nearly as tall as the walls that rise up around them.

“This place is creepy,” Inigo mutters. He avoids looking at the statues as they pass them. “Why are all the statues of skeleton men?”

Isran had wondered that, himself. Aside from the one woman—who he imagines might be meant to represent St. Alessia, given that they called themselves Alessians here—every statue they had passed was of a tall skeleton-faced man in a long robe and hood, not altogether so different from the crimson-robed Alessians they had passed on the way here.

The bridge is littered with even more bodies. Knights in ebony armor, red-skinned imp-like creatures in black piecemeal armor that look a bit like Falmer if they had been left to roast in the sun, and even more strangely—several knights in armor of a stark white, shining and pristine, the material appearing almost as if made of crystal. They did not seem to fit amongst the other inhabitants of Coldharbour, and their bodies, as well as some of the others, did not look quite as new as the others.

In fact, they looked like they might have been there for decades, if not centuries.

At the end of the bridge, the whitish vision at the end becomes clearer.

As they grow closer, Isran can see that the whitish thing he might have mistaken for ice or snow at a distance was not either of those things, but rather white crystal that had formed and expanded across the bridge’s far end, pieces of that crystal growth having jutted outward into spikes and strange obelisks.

As Isran reaches it, he realizes that the crystalline wall itself is not even purely just a wall—there are more of the white-clad knights there, trapped within it, frozen in the crystal. One of them, at the very forefront, is only half-encased in that crystal, the red slit of his helmet’s visor plainly visible, one of his hands reaching outward as though he had tried to walk through the crystal wall and failed.

“The hell is this…” He leans closer, hearing a low rumble behind it.

The rumble is unsettling, a constant shifting and groaning of the crystal that forms that wall that sounds not unlike that of the shifting of ice beneath one’s feet on a frozen lake, the deep, cavernous cracking that sounds when thick ice shifts against itself. It sounds as though, somehow, the wall is _alive_ , moving, breathing somewhere behind what Isran can see with his own eyes.

It sounds as though that wall just might fall, if it cracked hard enough.

Just beneath that cracking sound, Isran hears a soft humming. He snaps his gaze to Inigo, almost expecting to find the cat swaying on his feet, humming to himself, but Inigo is turned away from him, looking upward towards the overlook that crosses over the bridge above them.

Isran looks, too, and it is there he sees the source of that oddly cheerful humming.

A man, dressed in the same Alessian robes as Pepe had been, with the same sort of disfigured, half-squid like face. Only unlike Pepe, he merely sits there, his feet dangling over the edge of the overpass, swaying gently from side to side as though he dances to the rhythm to his own song. He seems almost not to have noticed them at all, his face turned instead towards the towering white of the crystallized wall ahead of them.

“Old man!” Isran shouts up at him, and the man startles, turning his head downward.

“Hello,” the man calls down, tone warm and inviting. He pats the stone of the overpass beside him. “Come, sit with me. I suspect you have questions.”

Isran frowns, exchanging a quick glance with Inigo, but the two of them make their way up one of the short flights of stairs on either side of the bridge and join the man at the top. Isran does not sit, but Inigo does.

“How did you know I had questions for you?”

“The last one did,” the man says, and shrugs. He looks up at Isran, craning his neck back to do so. Isran is a bit surprised the man doesn’t just topple over from the weight of his gigantic head. “Have a seat, please. There is no danger here.”

Isran eyes that wall warily. “I’m not so sure about that, old man.”

The man chuckles. “Arasil,” he tells them. “Once upon a time, I was a bishop.” He lets out a little sigh, turning back to the wall. “That’s all gone now, though.”

“You said the last one asked you questions. Was it a woman, a young elven woman?”

“Indeed,” says the Bishop Arasil, nodding sagely. “She, too, was curious about this wall. Seemed to be in quite a hurry, however. Didn’t stay very long to talk.” He tutted. “Shame, it’s been a long time since I had a decent conversation. I have missed it.”

“How long ago did you see her?”

“Long…?” The man looks up at Isran. “Why, there’s no telling how long ago that was. Yesterday, last week, two hours ago,” he shrugs helplessly. “It is all the same, here. Perhaps you and I have met before now, and we don’t remember it.”

Isran makes a face. He’s certain of it, now. These people must all have been driven insane in this place.

“Did you at least see where she went?”

“I imagine she went into the city.”

Isran frowns. “The city? Why?”

He shrugs again. “She was looking for a way in. The only way past the outer wall is through the sewers—but even then, she won’t be able to get to the center, given the barrier. She claimed she had someone inside the city walls she needed to see. People she had to meet.” He shakes his head. “She was very confusing about it all. Very vague. I’m not sure what she was looking for. I am not sure even _she_ knew what she was looking for.”

Isran wracks his brain, tries to think of what—or rather, who—might be within the city that Eres might have been chasing after. Surely, Molag Bal would be where the city was most protected, in the center behind the barriers. And if that was the case, then even if Eres snuck through the sewers into the city to get behind that wall, she would not be able to reach Molag Bal without taking down the barriers first.

So why, then, would Eres have gone into the city before dropping the others, if confronting Molag Bal was her goal? Who could she have meant to meet behind those walls?

“Did she say anything else about what she was doing?”

“Hm, no,” the bishop says lightly. “Just asked about Laza.”

“…Laza?”

“The man in the wall.” Bishop Arasil points. “She wanted to know who he was, why he was there.” Isran waits, pointedly. “He is Laza, a man with a deep hatred of Molag Bal. He came with Greymarch. But the barriers have frozen them in time.”

“Greymarch…?” Isran’s brow furrows. “The barrier keeps _them_ out?”

“Oh, yes,” Bishop Arasil nods eagerly. “Well, for now.”

“What does that mean?”

“Eventually,” Bishop Arasil begins, but it is then that Isran hears a thunderous cracking, a deep vibration beneath his feet, and, when he looks, he sees the spidering of a tremendous crack within that wall they stand in front of.

A crack so large that, Isran swears, the man that Bishop Arasil had called Laza actually _shifts_ , moving just an inch or two forward. Isran stares at that crack, waiting, but it expands no further. Laza does not move again. There is only the sound of Isran’s own heart, still hammering in his ears from the startle, and the shifting groans of the crystal wall as it returns to normal.

“Ah…” Bishop Arasil says, nodding to himself. “And so it begins…”

Isran stares at him. Inigo leaps to his feet, taking several steps away from the wall.

“What has happened to it?” Inigo asks him hurriedly. “Why did the wall crack? Why did he move?”

“You don’t know?” Bishop Arasil asks. “Another Tower has fallen. The barrier is weakening. So too, then, is Molag Bal’s curse against the Army of Order. It is only a matter of time, now.” The old man turns back to the wall. “I have been waiting so long for this.” He starts to hum again.

Inigo turns to Isran, a frown pulling at the edges of his mouth. “Inigo does not know this ‘Army of Order’,” he says.

Inigo may not know, but Isran does.

Isran steps away from the bishop, taking the steps back down to the bridge two and three at a time. From his belt, he pulls the Horn up to his mouth, hearing Inigo rush to chase after him.

“Serana,” he calls, voice tight with worry. “We have a problem.”

FORT DAWNGUARD  
 _Vault Chamber_

Serana spins away from her mother to grab at the Horn, anxiety leaping into her throat. “What is it, Isran? What’s happened?”

 _“It’s not what’s happened, it's what's **going** to happen.” _Isran sounds winded, and there’s a whistling tone over his words as if he’s running. By the sound of metal clanking on the other end, Serana would bet that he is. A man _running_ in plate armor is never a good sign. _“The Barriers. Eres dropped another one—”_

“That’s what we _want_ ,” Serana reminds him. “That’s a good thing—it means you can track where she’s just been.”

 _“Let me finish.”_ Isran snaps back at her, and Serana’s hand tightens around the Horn. _“The barriers—they’re not just keeping **us** out of the City. There’s a—there’s a wall, here, at the edge of the city by a bridge. There are soldiers caught in it, all in white. Trapped in what looks like crystal. When Eres dropped that barrier, that wall cracked, and I saw one of the soldiers move.” _

Beside her, Valerica goes deathly still, eyes widening. “Greymarch,” she breathes, her voice hardly more than a horrified whisper.

If Serana’s heart had still beat, it may have stopped. Her mouth opens, mind racing, but she can’t call words to her tongue. Cannot even think of what to say.

 _Greymarch._ Greymarch, in Coldharbour? They hadn’t been there when _they_ had gone to Coldharbour. How much had Coldharbour changed? What was Greymarch doing there _now_?

“You said—” Serana swallows. “You said the wall cracked, when Eres dropped the barrier?”

 _“I saw it with my own eyes,”_ Isran murmurs, voice low. _“If that wall’s going to splinter every time she drops a barrier—that thing is going to fall apart by the time she drops the last one. That barrier is the only thing holding them back.”_

“I must leave,” Valerica says suddenly, and Serana’s head snaps to look at her.

“You _what?_ Mother, you can’t leave now—you know more about the Greymarch than I do. How can we prevent this long enough to get her _out_?”

“That is exactly why I must leave, Serana,” Valerica says, and she actually ducks down, bends at the waist to embrace her shortly. Serana is so surprised by the sudden display of affection from the woman that she doesn’t manage to respond before she pulls away. “My knowledge of Greymarch has waned over the years. I remember little of it, especially not of what it may be like when it is in active progress. If we should have any hope of preventing calamity within Coldharbour—any hope of ensuring their safe return, I must go to the College. There will be records there, histories of past Greymarch cataclysms. I should be able to learn more of _how_ Greymarch functions in action, and we will be able to adapt our plans to compensate.”

Serana nods, watching as her mother speeds out of the room, faster than Serana has often seen her move. Her mother rarely showed her vampiric abilities aside from Necromancy, but she is no more of a slouch than Serana is. She could make it to the College in back within two days, perhaps less, if she ran all night and hunted along the way.

_“Serana?”_

“Ah…” Serana shakes her head, shakes the worries and the doubts and the fears and the panic that wants to grow in her. “Listen, I don’t—I don’t remember much about Greymarch, myself, only that it has to do with Jyggalag.” She racks her brain, trying desperately to pull the information from it.

She _knows_ she’s read about Greymarch before. Of all the books she’s read over her lifetime, she’s _certain_ she’s read an accounting of it. But it had all been so long ago, before she’d been entombed, and she can’t manage to pull anything to the front of her mind aside from the very basics.

She begins to pace, Horn in her hands, nervous energy thrumming beneath her skin.

“Greymarch, it’s—it’s under Jyggalag, I know that much. It’s a, a—”

 _“Cleansing,”_ Isran says darkly. _“I know what Greymarch is,"_ he says. _"Jyggalag’s the Prince of Order. He was cursed by the other Princes to spend much of his eternity as the Prince of Madness, Sheogorath,”_ Isran recites the words as if he’d learned them by rote, as if he’d been tested and tested and tested on the knowledge so many times that he had memorized it by heart. _“Once at the end of every Era, Sheogorath can return to his true form as Jyggalag, and lead the Greymarch to wipe out the realms of Oblivion to start anew. The other Princes fear him—he was once believed to be more powerful than all of them combined. That’s why they cursed him with Madness. The Greymarch is,”_ and here, Isran pauses, hesitating, and when he speaks again his voice is lower, rougher, deeply troubled.

_“The Greymarch is unstoppable, Serana. Inevitable. It’s the balancing force in a system of complete chaos. That Molag Bal has been able to hold them off for this long with his barrier—I don’t know what kind of effect that might have had on them. When that last barrier falls, this realm is going to fall with it. What I need to know is how we're going to get out once that barrier drops.”_

“We have time.” Serana must believe that. By her count, Eres had only dropped two barriers. That meant there were at least two remaining, assuming that Molag Bal had not added more Towers since the last time she and her mother had been in Coldharbour.

They had _time_. They had time to figure this out. She just—they just needed to find Eres.

“There’s two more barriers,” she tells Isran, voicing her thoughts aloud. “The Greymarch can’t enter Coldharbour until the barrier is dropped, right?”

 _“We hope,”_ Isran mutters.

“Let’s _assume_ that that’s the case,” Serana says, because she doesn’t want to consider the alternative. “Figure out which tower it was that Eres just deactivated, and hurry to find her. If you can reach her quickly enough, you might be able to slow her down until we can figure this out.”

_“And if not?”_

Serana closes her eyes, her hold tightening over the Horn. “Don’t,” she warns. “Don’t make me think about that. If we can’t find her before that barrier drops, and Greymarch begins—”

 _“Then we’re all dead.”_ Isran swears, violently, in several languages. _“By Stendarr,”_ he mutters, _“this couldn’t get much worse.”_

Serana almost laughs, remembering Eres suddenly. Remembering when Eres had said something just like that. And then, of course, things had gotten worse. She hopes this will not follow the same pattern. 

It had been bad enough, already. The chances that they would find Eres and manage to bring her back to Nirn had already been slim. They had already been on a time limit. Now that the Greymarch is suddenly a factor—Serana can almost see that window of opportunity closing further in her mind. As hard as it had seemed before, retrieving Eres will only be that much harder _now_.

Now, the very thing they needed to save Eres might be the exact same thing that would end her.

COLLEGE OF WINTERHOLD  
 _Arcaneum_

Valerica has not been to the College of Winterhold since—goodness, since before Serana had been born. She had studied there once, briefly, many eons ago, back when she had still been human. Her interest in necromancy then had been more of a rebellion, a clawing against the rigidity of the College’s strict adherences to such benign codes of conduct. Why couldn’t they only _understand_ what uses necromancy could have? If they hadn’t been so stubborn, so unyielding, so quick to judgment, perhaps they might have seen its uses, might have understood just how many lives they could spare for just the slightest bending of their strict moral code.

Tamriel had never been a stranger to war. Had never been a stranger to death. Didn’t they see, just how many soldiers they could have, waiting to be called from beneath the very soil they bled on? How many lives they could save if only they could see far enough past their own noses?

Valerica had not been thrown out of the College. She had not been stupid enough to allow her sensibilities to get in the way of her studies. But when she had learned all that she could from her masters here, she had left—to conduct her own studies without the College breathing over her neck.

Shortly after, she had married Harkon. His castle and isolation gave her plenty of room to work her experimentations without attracting the attention of those who might turn against them. When Harkon had pledged his allegiance to Molag Bal, Valerica had not been certain—but neither had she fought it.

Daedric Princes rewarded their followers well. And she, as any, knew of the immortality that Molag Bal could gift her. Immortality that would allow her to remain in her prime, allow her to never age out of her brilliance, never wither away in both body and mind. It had seemed like a fair deal, then—she would pledge herself to this God, and what she would gain would far outweigh the costs.

She’d had her daughter, just before her own turning. They had wanted at least one, to carry on their legacy. Harkon had been…resigned, to this. He had wanted a son, of course, as men often did. For what good were daughters, if not to provide another man with a son of his own? But Valerica had pushed—she was getting older, and she must stop the aging before it took the most brilliant parts of her mind and laid waste to them. They had gone to Coldharbour. Harkon had offered her. She had, then, given freely—it was expected of her, it was the cost she paid for the immortality she would gain.

A cost, she’d thought then, that was a mere blink of time, a mere fraction of her unending life that she would soon forget. A necessary sacrifice. All good things come with a cost, she had told herself.

But then her child had grown. Blessedly human. Blessedly fragile. Soft, and sweet, and so, so innocent. There had been a part of her that was selfish. Soon, she thought, when she is older, she will be Blessed by him, too, and then she will not have to watch her age, watch her own daughter waste away before her eyes. It was expected. Serana would grow to adulthood, and then she would be immortal, just as them. They had wanted at least one of their own lineage, though Harkon had turned many who hoped to gain his favor. Serana had been meant to rise above them both, some day.

But the years passed. Serana refused one suitor after another, both vampiric and otherwise. She held no interest in the men that her father threw at her. No interest in continuing their lineage.

That was fine, they had told themselves. Serana could simply become as they were, and they would rule these poor fools together. Valerica supposed, at one time, Harkon might have hoped to craft her in his image—but Serana grew more like her, more like her mother, with each passing day, and his resentment grew.

By the time that Valerica’s internal debate had manifested into a reluctance she could no longer hide, it was too late to rail against that which was expected of her. That which was expected of Serana. They had made a deal, after all, for Harkon’s purity.

That had been shortly before Harkon had discovered his prophecy. The one that had split their family apart. Not that they had been especially close to begin with, of course, given the circumstances, but all the same: Valerica had begun her preparations.

Just years later, she had sealed Serana away, and stepped into the Soul Cairn where she would spend the next several millennia, waiting for a day that may never come.

It had, unexpectedly, at the hands of a Vigilant. A Vigilant who had stood beside _her_ daughter and had _dared_ , dared to judge her for her actions. For the things she had done to protect her daughter. Perhaps, no matter her intentions, it had been too little, too late. She and Serana had certainly had enough arguments since.

Her daughter is not quite a different woman than she remembers, altogether. She is much the same woman that Valerica raised. But, removed from the shadow both she and Harkon had cast over her, Serana had grown, bloomed into something more, become the woman she had always been but _louder_ , more resilient, more vocal about her misgivings.

Valerica could say she was an irritant. She had, on more than one occasion. There are still parts of Serana that are hopelessly naïve, embarrassingly narrow-minded, but even that can only be blamed on herself, on the way they had sheltered her, on the manner in which they had hidden her from the world at large, kept her from experiencing the very things that would have matured her.

Things like love, which Valerica had once feared Serana might never experience. Valerica had never wanted Serana to end up with a man like her father, like the man Valerica had married purely for convenience. Each time Serana had snubbed one of the men Harkon sent her way, Valerica had been secretly pleased, gratified, assured in that perhaps Serana would be a better woman than herself—a smarter woman, and find someone worthy. It was all that a mother could have hoped for her.

When Valerica had hoped that Serana would find someone worthy of her attention, she had _not_ meant a woman who would make enemies of the very god they had once sworn allegiance to. She had _not_ meant a woman with the blood of a dragon, with the blessing of Gods weaving about her person like a cloak of radiance that burned to look at her.

Why, Valerica wondered, dismayed despite herself—why could Serana had not just fallen for a _normal_ woman. Man, woman, Valerica cared not—but why had she chosen someone so gods-damned _contrary_?

“Whatever has you in so sour a mood, I am sure the books are not to blame.”

Valerica looks up from the shelf, eyes narrowed. She has no time for _humor_. “I am not in the mood for small talk. You may take your niceties elsewhere.” And she turns, back to scouring the shelf, sure that there is _something_ here on the nature of Greymarch, on—

A hand presses against the shelf in front of her. “You have me mistaken,” says the woman. “I am not here for niceties.” A wave of her hand. The settling of a silencing shroud around them, the barest wisp of arcane energy in the air.

Valerica turns to her, raising a brow. A spell so seamless and near-unnoticeable was not the work of a novice.

“Glad to have caught your attention.” The woman says, and she holds out a hand. “I am Mirabelle Ervine, Master Wizard of this college. And you,” she says shrewdly, eyes narrowing, “are one of the Volkihar vampires, are you not?”

Valerica does not have to lift her chin to look down her nose at this woman, but she does all the same. Nobility is as bred into her as the shape of her cheekbones, or the height of her stature. It is as natural to her as breathing might have been, once upon a time.

“I am,” she confirms. “You have met my daughter then, I assume.”

“Once,” Mirabelle confirms. “And the last time I saw her here, it had not been idle curiosity that had brought her here. And so I must wonder,” she says, looking at Valerica like she is a puzzle she wants to put together, “what could bring _you_ here, now? Is there another doomsday prophecy we should all be worried about? Perhaps the destruction of the moons, next?”

At that, Valerica rolls her eyes. “Nothing so trite, I am afraid. I would not call my curiosity _idle_ , however—it _is_ a curiosity that has brought me here.”

“Oh?” Mirabelle asks. “And what of this curiosity, then? Perhaps I can help you find the answers you seek. You have been here for hours, by my count, with little progress.”

Valerica quirks a brow at her. “Watching me, are you?”

“When a vampire enters a home without notice, one tends to pay attention to what it is they might be doing,” Mirabelle says plainly. “You will forgive me for my forwardness. I mean no disrespect. You are, of course, welcome to peruse the Arcaneum as any other. I can tell you are a woman of a… particular taste.” Mirabelle’s eyes drift, to caress the spines of the tomes upon the shelf Valerica stands in front of. “What, may I ask, has one such as yourself so interested in the Myths of Sheogorath and Jyggalag? Not exactly what I would consider common reading material.”

“I would certainly hope not.” Considering that most of the tomes she has flipped through so far have been less than useless, Valerica has little to lose. “You say you have met my daughter.”

“I have—she shares many of your features.” Mirabelle gestures towards the ridge of her brow, the bridge of her nose. Valerica knows, too, that Serana looks much more like herself than Harkon. “I also know that of the Volkihar, there are only two remaining. She mentioned you, at the end of the battle.”

“Oh.” For some reason, that stuns her. Valerica had not expected that Serana would have told others about her. The woman she loved, perhaps, that Vigilant—Valerica would have expected. A mage from the college, Master Wizard or no, Valerica had not. “Did she?”

“She mentioned that she must retrieve you, bring you home.” Mirabelle crosses her arms over her chest, leaning against the shelves. “She seemed quite dedicated to the cause at the time. I am glad to see she succeeded in her endeavor.”

“I see.” Perhaps she would never admit it aloud, but hearing that warms her. Part of her had wondered if Serana had only come for her out of obligation. That perhaps Serana had not truly wanted her back in Skyrim at her side, but had only felt that she _must_. It was comforting, in a way, to learn that that was not the case. “You have some familiarity with my daughter, then.”

“Not much, I am afraid,” Mirabelle admits. “And only slightly more with Eres.” Her expression tightens, then, lips pressing together. “I must ask you, does this research of yours have to do with her?”

Valerica considers not telling her. She considers that, not long ago, she would not have trusted this woman even half as far as she could throw her. She would not have told her a thing. This was _her_ business, and gods only knew what a person could do with the information.

But. She has been trying. And Mirabelle _does_ seem to know Eres, and Serana, and perhaps this woman is another of the many allies they have both seem to have collected in their time together.

In which case, this woman may be one of few people Valerica _can_ trust with her theories on what is happening in Coldharbour, and one of even fewer people who might know exactly where she might find the answers to her questions.

Valerica turns to her.

She will take a chance, this once.

Eres is in Coldharbour, and there is little worse that can happen that is not _already_ happening. There is little that Mirabelle could do to make matters _worse_ than they already were. It was a win-win situation: Valerica might gain valuable information herself, with little risk. She will chance it.

“Yes,” she answers, with a resolute nod. “I am afraid Eres has been indisposed.”

Mirabelle’s eyebrows raise, once. “By Sheogorath?”

“If only,” Valerica murmurs. “She has been taken to Coldharbour against her will.” Mirabelle’s brows snap together, then, and Valerica nods. “And I have reason to believe that our plan to retrieve her from Coldharbour may also set Greymarch into motion.”

By the look that comes over Mirabelle’s face, Valerica knows the woman is familiar with it.

“Come,” Mirabelle says urgently. “If there is anyone who will know of any records of Greymarch, it is Urok.”

Mirabelle draws her along, dropping the silencing spell around them, and bring her to a stout, orcish man who, on hearing the topic of their research, tenses full-bodily. He then leads the both of them to a tucked away cranny of the Arcaneum where the oldest records are kept, locked behind glass cases only accessible by his own key. The pages of the books he brings to them are so fragile that they cannot even be touched with their fingers, but instead must be turned with a special tool designed for its gentleness.

He remains nearby, a wealth of information that Valerica had not expected from the look of them, and she and Mirabelle join minds to research more quickly.

The more that Valerica reads, the lower her stomach sinks.

“What was it that man in Coldharbour said again?” Mirabelle wonders aloud, skimming over the contents of a page from a tome almost as big as her entire torso.

“That Eres was meant to be there,” Valerica tells her.

Mirabelle’s expression tightens. She beckons Valerica with a hand, and points to a long passage spanning almost the entire page.

Valerica takes one look at that page, the missing piece to the puzzle she has been ruminating over since she left the Fort, and swears aloud for the first time in what may have been thousands of years.

“I must return to Fort Dawnguard at once.”

Mirabelle nods curtly. “I would make haste,” she agrees. “You may not have much time.”

Valerica is gone, almost before she has even finished her sentence.

Valerica had had her suspicions.

If what they had found was the truth of it, which Valerica thinks it may just be—it is much, much worse than she could have imagined.

COLLEGE OF WINTERHOLD  
 _Mirabelle’s Quarters_

The door closes.

The room is dark. Mirabelle knows her own quarters like the back of her hand, and so she does not need the light to know that she is not alone. She lights the wick of the candle upon her dresser, all the same, bathing the room in soft, flickering warmth.

She had not needed the light to see the woman sitting at her writing desk, facing the door. She had not needed to see her at all, for Mirabelle had already known that she would be there, waiting for her return.

“What news have you?” The woman asks of her, voice as soft in the darkness as though she feared speaking too loudly would betray her presence to the world at large. As if, even now, she is still hiding. Her voice is accented, lilting almost musically when she speaks, so that every word she breathes sounds like a song. “You said—”

“I know what I said.” Mirabelle turns, leans against her dresser. Looks at her.

She is older than Mirabelle remembers, if only barely. Mirabelle has aged decades. She has seen the sprouting of creases at the edges of her mouth, at the corners of her eyes. She has seen age make itself known on her face, her youth falling way to something that was not quite wizened, not quite _old_ , but getting there. In her face, she sees her own mortality.

In _hers_ , she sees longevity.

It is one of many things the Mer have that Mirabelle has once envied. Not now, of course, she is far too old for such petty jealousy—but before, perhaps, when she was younger. When she had aged, and her friend had not.

She is reminded of that now, looking at her, because Mirabelle has gotten so much older, and she has hardly changed at all.

Mirabelle could have taken the woman she had known then, and the woman who sat before her now, and placed them side by side, and she is not sure she would have been able to tell the difference between them at all, had it not been for the eyes. The eyes, which are the only thing about this woman that seems to have aged at all. Something wistful and distant within them, even as she watches Mirabelle so closely. Like she is both _here_ , and yet not.

She has always been a bit like that, in a way, as her kind are wont to be. But she is more so now, than she has ever been. More so now, near twenty years on, than Mirabelle could remember her being before.

“She was the mother of an… acquaintance, I suppose,” Mirabelle tells her. “That acquaintance is a very close friend of Eres.”

“She was a vampire.” The woman states this as a fact, not a question. She had seen her, seen her from across the Arcaneum, seen her from the same place that Mirabelle had seen her. The same place where Mirabelle had said, _stay_ , and she had stayed, where her younger self might have argued it. _Would_ have argued it. But this woman is older, and wiser, and harder where she had once been soft. Cooler where she had once been warm.

“She was,” Mirabelle confirms. “As is her daughter.”

“Who is her friend.”

“Who is her friend,” Mirabelle confirms, again. She holds that gaze. The too-blue eyes that seem too sharp in this lighting, like the warmth of the candlelight should have softened them but could not. This woman had been soft, once. She is not, anymore. Not as she was before. Too much time had passed since then.

The woman nods. For a long moment, she is silent. Behind those eyes, Mirabelle can see her mind working, can see the thoughts as they spin, the cogs as they work and wind within. She has always been a woman who considered every action, every word, every breath before she takes it. That much has not changed.

At least that much has not changed.

“Tell me,” the woman demands, “what it is she came here for. Has it to do with Eres?”

“It does.” Mirabelle folds her arms over her chest, tightens her fingers over her arms until it hurts, just a little. She will not like to hear this. _Mirabelle_ had not liked to hear it, and she is not nearly as personally invested. “She was researching the Greymarch.”

A pause. A blink. A frown. “And what has that to do with her?”

Mirabelle sighs. She closes her eyes. “It has _everything_ to do with her.”

Mirabelle tells her. She tells her as much as she knows. She hides nothing, because nothing can be hidden from her—she knows Mirabelle too well, knows when she is lying, knows even when she merely omits the truth. She would have known if Mirabelle had not told her everything, and so she does not bother trying to hide anything at all.

By the time she has finished, the woman is standing. Clutching her hands at her waist, so tightly that even her bronzed skin turns near-white around her knuckles. Her lips press together in a thin line, dark brows low over darker eyes—dark with newfound knowledge, dark with worry, dark with fear. 

“I must go to her.” She says, words rushed in a manner that seems contradictory to her very nature. Like she’s spoken them before has had the chance to temper them. Like she has not spent her entire life carefully parsing each word she speaks aloud, as Mirabelle knows that she has.

“You must _not_ ,” Mirabelle says, just as quickly. “There is nothing you can do.”

“I can lend them my _aid_ ,” she argues, with that same urgency. Her voice is as brittle as sugarglass, as a sheet of thin ice, as though it might crack and shatter under just the slightest hint of pressure. “They will need it, if what you say is true—”

“If it is true,” Mirabelle warns her, “then there is precious little that any of us can do. It must run its course. That is the way things are.”

“That is—”

“I know very well what she is,” Mirabelle reminds her. “Have you forgotten?” She asks, though she knows her tone is crueler than it should be. Crueler than she wants it to be. But she will not listen otherwise, and Mirabelle knows this better than most. “You would not even know where she is, what she is doing, _how_ she is doing—were it not for me. I _know_ , Auria.”

“Then you should at least _pretend_ to understand,” Auria bites back, eyes flashing. Her hands, clasped so tightly, clench together as she laces her fingers together, and for just a moment, Mirabelle feels the flash of her anger, feels it as well as she could have felt the very wind upon her face.

She is impressed, though she shouldn’t be. Auria has tighter control over her magic now than she had ever had when they were younger. Mirabelle supposes she must. Auria had had no choice but to hide it, then. She had learned it of necessity. Someone less skilled than Mirabelle herself may not have sensed it at all.

“I am not so cold-hearted as you might believe.” Mirabelle forces her voice to soften, grinds the edges of her own temper until it is as smooth as silk between them. “When she came to me, I knew. I knew that I would call upon you. Just as I knew that she might call upon me. Just as I knew that I would not refuse her when she did—and I _did not_ ,” she reminds her. “But in this, you know as well as I that we—precious mortals that we are—have nothing we can offer here. Not for all the power in the world could we effect change upon this _one_ thing. It is far beyond our power. Yours, mine, this College combined—every mage in this world could come together, and it would still not be enough.”

Auria’s expression twists. Contorts into something like pain. Mirabelle’s own heart contorts with it.

Auria is right, in a way. Mirabelle does not understand. She knows Eres from a distance. In some ways she is closer, but in many she is not. Her own personal stake in this is one that she can lift, one that she can nudge from the ground and move at will, one that is not cemented but instead implied, soft where Auria’s is hard. Temporary, where Auria’s is permanent. She has the luxury of pulling out, of pulling away, of cutting her losses should the need arise—Auria does not. Has not. Will not ever. Auria would not have wanted that, even if she could have had it. Had never wanted that, even when it was thrust upon her.

But Mirabelle does care, in her own way. In her way of purposeful distance, at arm’s length. In her way of caring for Auria, and therein, for Eres as well, merely by association.

She had watched Eres because Auria would have wanted her to. _Did_ want her to. Does.

“There is nothing we can do,” Mirabelle says again, softly. “The die has been cast. She is Chosen.”

“By _whom_?” Auria snaps. “ _Who_ has chosen her?”

“The world,” Mirabelle offers. “The universe at large. The gods themselves, perhaps.” She shrugs. “We can never know how the threads of fate bind us. That is well beyond our understanding. Only that it does, and we have no choice but to follow the paths it lays out for us.”

“She is a _child_ ,” Auria breathes, brokenly, a hushed whisper over raw emotion. “She will need me.”

“She is an adult,” Mirabelle counters, though not unkindly. She gentles her voice, if only because she knows it will hurt whether she makes it so or not. “She has not needed you for some time.”

Auria reels back, as well as if Mirabelle had slapped her. Perhaps she might have, in a way. In a manner.

“I had no _choice_.”

“Neither did she.” Mirabelle shrugs again. “Neither _does_ she, now,” she amends. “Greymarch will happen, because it must. Eres has a role in that, because she must. That is the way things are.”

“You know that I have never been content with _the way things are_.”

At that, Mirabelle laughs. Oh, how very well she knows that. Very well, indeed.

“I am aware.”

“Tell me where they are. Where that woman has gone.”

“Why? So you can distract them? So you can insert yourself into an equation in which you are not required for the solution?” Auria’s mouth presses together, nose wrinkling with her anger, and Mirabelle again is reminded sorely of just how little she’s aged, physically. She feels like she’s just twenty again, reigning in her friend’s too-flammable temper. “Eres has a home, here.”

“What has that to do with anything?”

“Let me finish,” Mirabelle sighs. “You cannot help them now. But, when they return—Eres will need time to recover. I imagine they will bring her back to Fellburg, when the matter is done. Wait for her there.”

“And you expect them simply to allow me inside, so close to her?”

“No,” Mirabelle admits. She does not know who reigns at Fellburg in Eres’ absence, but if they are anything at all like Eres’ other friends, they are like to be suspicious. Like to be protective. Wary. “I suggest finding another way to bring yourself closer to her. You have some skill in healing—there is always a need for a healer, no matter how small or large the village. Find yourself a place in her household, and you will be better able to receive her when she arrives. _That_ is where you can help, Auria.”

Auria turns from her. Paces. Braces her hands on her hips. Sighs. When she looks back at Mirabelle, she can still see the anger in those eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw—but also the resignation, the acceptance.

Then, uncertainty. “You think it wise for me to hide myself there?”

“For now,” Mirabelle agrees. “Until she returns.”

Auria places a hand to her chin. Scratches at her jaw. Mirabelle smirks, amused despite herself. So markedly similar, for two people who had grown so far apart.

“I cannot tell them,” Auria says. “How can I know they can be trusted?”

“Eres seems to trust them well enough.”

“She is a child,” Auria repeats.

“She is much more than that. I would think the situation has made that rather clear. She chooses her friends wisely.”

At that, Auria scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Her friends, you’ve told me. She has made friends of _vampires_ , Mira. Insults to the Song.”

“And Eres knows nothing of it,” Mirabelle reminds her. “These vampires have proven themselves. Or,” she amends, “at least the daughter has. She is intensely protective of her.”

Auria quirks a brow at this, unconvinced. She sneers. “Perhaps it is her _blood_ she is protective of.”

“Do you suggest that Eres is enthralled?”

“It would explain why she _walked into Coldharbour_.”

“I am fairly certain that was not of her own free will.” Mirabelle watches the woman pace. She should perhaps be less amused, she knows, but Auria has always been a fascinating contradiction of a woman. Soft, and yet sharp. Cold, and yet warm. Tempered, and yet oh so very fiery.

“Go to Fellburg, Auria,” Mirabelle says again. “Wait for her there.”

Auria spins to look at her. Again, the wheels turn. The cogs shift. Mirabelle knows what she means to ask even before she says it. “You go to them, then,” she says, and Mirabelle is not surprised in the slightest. “I must know what is happening. You _must_ tell me, if anything should happen—”

“Auria,” Mirabelle sighs, but Auria would hear none of it.

“You _must_ ,” she insists. “And when they return, you can bring them to Fellburg immediately. I can ensure a circle is placed when I arrive.”

Mirabelle raises a brow at her. “And you believe that won’t arouse suspicion?”

Auria raises her chin, defiant. “It shan’t,” she says primly, “should I hide it well enough.”

Mirabelle drops her head, hiding a smile. Auria doesn’t need any more encouragement. “And I suppose you have a place in mind?”

“Not yet. But I will.” Auria speaks this into being. It is not a maybe, not a perhaps, but a definite. One way or another, Auria would find a way. She always does. She always has. “You want me to go to them? Fine. I can do this, much as I mislike it. But you, my dear Mira,” and she comes to Mirabelle, places soft, warm hands at either side of her face, resting gently upon her cheeks. She pats them, patronizingly. “Will go to them. And you will keep me updated, or I shall know why.”

Mirabelle stands. She is taller than Auria. Not that her height has ever stopped Auria from being the largest thing in the room.

“You threaten me?”

Auria drops her hands. She raises a fine, delicate brow, eyes flashing with meaning. “And if I do?”

“Do avoid turning me into a toad, if you will. I’ve rather always disliked them.”

“I considered a raccoon, actually.” Mirabelle raises her brows at that, and Auria smiles impishly back at her. “Crafty little things. Always getting into things they should not be.”

“I believe that fits _you_ more than it fits me.”

Auria reaches to pat at her face again. “I am a fox, my dear. You are far too young to have such a failing memory.”

Mirabelle rolls her eyes. “ _Go_ , Auria.”

Auria leans back. “And?”

“And I will go,” Mirabelle says, at last, and she is met with Auria’s victorious, self-satisfied smile. As if there had ever been any other option. As if Mirabelle would not have gone, anyways, regardless whether Auria had asked her or not. She knows better than to believe she has much of a choice, now. “Are you now satisfied?”

“Only just.” Auria pulls her cloak about her shoulders. Fastens the brooch at her neck. She pulls her hood over dark russet hair, bathing her too-young face in shadow. “Where is this Fellburg, then?”

“Falkreath,” Mirabelle says shortly. “Half between that and Rorikstead, I’m told.” She gestures vaguely at the map mounted to her wall, and Auria goes to it, examines it shortly, and then nods.

“I expect to hear from you shortly,” Auria reminds her, helpfully.

Mirabelle nods. “I will make preparations at once.”

“Good,” Auria says, and with a snap of her fingers, she is gone.

Just like that. Like she had never been there at all.

What Mirabelle wouldn’t do to lock that woman in a room sometime, just to figure out how exactly that magic worked. What did they have in Valenwood, she wondered, that they did not have here in Skyrim?

With a shake of her head, Mirabelle turns to her wardrobe. It seems that she has a journey to pack for, now. She really should have expected that.

* * *

FORT DAWNGUARD  
 _Vault Chamber_

“Serana.”

Serana near leaps from her chair. “Mother. Finally,” she breathes, elated to see her. “I didn’t expect you back so quickly.”

“I had help,” she says shortly.

Serana frowns. She doesn’t like the way her mother is looking at her. “With Greymarch?” She asks, and her mother nods grimly. “What did you find out?”

Valerica takes a breath. She sits. Serana falls into the seat across from her, dread pooling low in her stomach. Her mother almost _never_ sits. She is always working, always moving, never still for any longer than she has to be.

The only time Valerica sits is when there is bad news.

“Mother?”

Valerica looks at her. Serana hates that she sees something like pity in her eyes. Something like remorse.

“I am afraid,” her mother says slowly, “that it is worse than we thought. Worse than we might have ever imagined.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh????


	6. The Paths We Tread

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a few lore terms in this chapter. Check the notes at the end for a spoiler-free explanation of what they are if you're unfamiliar.

ACT V  
CHAPTER VI  
THE PATHS WE TREAD

COLDHARBOUR  
_City Outskirts_

They run.

Not the whole way, of course. Isran is a fit man, but even he tires after some time. They rest at times, short rests just to catch their breaths, and then they are moving again, moving as fast as they can, hoping, praying, that they might catch Eres this time. That they _just_ might find her.

The tower that fell, Isran had realized, could only be the one to the north of the wall they’d been at when it had fallen. When he looks to the sky, to the horizon, he can see it—the pillars of swirling, reddish energy that rise from the spires in the distance, only two of them left—one to the northeast, across the island, and one to the far southeast, near twice as far from their position as the other.

The one just ahead of them, however, now _finally_ in view hours later, does not have that same energy surrounding it. Isran could see that even before they had made their approach. He could see that as they had half-run, half power-walked to their destination every time he looked towards the sky, every time he looked and had not seen that swirling energy.

He is not even surprised to find the bodies there when they arrive.

The barrier is silent. Deathly so. There is not just one body, not two or three, but several, scattered around the area, some of them those self-same impish creatures they had seen before in the black armor, two of them the ebony knights, their armor old and rusted and far too worn to have been recent kills. The last body, however, is different—a gargantuan thing of a man, in plate armor, a massive helmet upon his head that took the shape of a bull’s head, with red stones for eyes that remind Isran sorely of the vexing Sir Juncan they had met once before.

Isran crouches next to that body, runs his fingers through the dust and grime that has collected on the dark surface of the armor it wears. Not all of it comes off on his hand, so baked to the surface it is, and even when he scratches at it with his nails, he cannot get the thickest layer of grime to so much as budge. He can see rust, in places, not the kind brought by water but that of age, just at the seams of places where the moisture of the body rotting inside might have wettened it, caused it to oxidize.

“Is he the one that guarded this place?” Inigo asks, and he too crouches beside it, grimaces when he locks eyes with the helmet. “This one looks old,” he says.

Isran nods. He chooses another place, scrapes his nails there. Nothing. Inigo follows his lead, doing the same with a spot of grime upon the pauldron on the bull-man’s shoulder with a claw much hardier than Isran’s fingernails could ever be. Inigo get through the grime, but only because he scratches through to the metal itself beneath, and Isran feels his mouth pulling into a deep frown.

“Something’s not right here.” He sweeps his gaze across the battlefield. He has gotten used to the imps and the ebony knights being so aged—he is certain that a battle had taken place in some areas, long before their arrival, even before Eres’, and those bodies were what remained. They were too aged, too much part of the landscape, to have been anything else.

But this one, this bull-man, is not as old as the others. He has not sunk into the soil as he might have with time and the blowing of sand and dirt across him. But he has been inundated with it all the same, caked with so much of it over time that Coldharbour’s never-setting sun had baked the grime to the metal, coating it in a permanent layer of crust that could not have been removed except, perhaps, with a dunking in steaming water, if even that.

That kind of grime did not build up over mere hours. That was the kind of wear that one might expect from weeks, perhaps months, of a body left to rot in armor in open air where it would be exposed to the elements around the clock.

“This doesn’t make _sense_.” The words come out of him as a growl, his frustration mounting, starting to simmer at his blood within his veins.

It doesn’t make _sense_.

They had been _right behind her_. They’d _seen it_ when the barrier fell. It couldn’t have been more than just a few hours ago. Five, at the most. This could not be _five hours_ worth of wear. It was impossible.

But he knows.

He knows that time in Coldharbour does not flow as it does in Nirn. He knows that they had already discovered that Eres had been there for months, but that time did not seem to flow as quickly for them as it did for her. He knows that, more than once, the residents of this place had alluded to the concept that time here was not linear, could not be linear, could not be comprehended.

 _"Yesterday, last week, two hours ago,”_ he hears the bishop say, and his mind churns, turning end over end. Tension tightens at his shoulders, at the back of his neck, traveling all the way up his skull and to his temples.

It just doesn’t make _sense_. They should have been right behind her. How could they have seen the barrier fall, in real time, and still seem to be so far behind where she had been last? Is it really possible that time could flow so differently for them than it does for her?

And if that is the case, is there any chance they could _ever_ have caught up with her in the first place?

Or, now that Isran thinks of it, if what takes _days_ for them is _months_ to Eres, then why have they not caught up with her already? Would that not mean that time is flowing _faster_ for them than it is for her? Why had they not overtaken her by now, if that was the case?

Isran pulls the Horn from his belt. He puts it to his mouth. Sighs. Closes his eyes. He has no idea how to even articulate the questions he needs to ask, the questions he needs answers to. How could one even ask for clarity on things they barely understood?

“Serana,” he calls to it.

There’s a delay, but only in seconds, not minutes. As always. Serana is nothing if not reliable.

 _“Isran,”_ she says, her voice of breath of a whisper in the Horn, but Isran can hear it all the same. He can hear the tension in her tone, the uncertainty. The worry.

He feels regretful, for a moment. He’s not going to make her feel any better. He wishes he had good news. For himself, if not for her alone.

“We reached the Tower.”

 _“Did you find her?”_ Serana asks, urgently. Not eagerly. Odd. Worrisome. It's like she already know he's going to have bad news for her. Like she might know something he doesn't. 

“No.” Isran looks back down at the bull-man. He is almost certain he can feel his wrinkles growing deeper by the second. At this rate, his beard will be grey by the time he gets out of here. Damn girl. “That’s what we need to talk about. We found a body. I’m guessing it’s one of those Gatekeepers you were talking about before we left. Someone who guards the tower. There was a guard at the last one, too,” he remembers, thinking of the Alessian-robed man he’d seen killed on the stairs. “Serana, this body should be _hours_ old.”

A pause. A beat. _“It isn’t?”_

Somehow, Serana doesn’t seem as surprised at that as he thought she would be. His eyes narrow. They’ve found something, he is certain of it. They’ve found something they haven’t told him yet, for some reason. They knew. They had known something was off before he even contacted them.

He says it aloud all the same. “The barrier dropped just hours ago. This body looks like it’s been here for weeks, if not longer.” He pauses. Waits. Serana says nothing. “You tell me how that’s possible.”

The next pause is longer, so long that he wonders if she’s chosen not to answer him.

Then, _“We had our suspicions.”_ Valerica. Voice tightly controlled. _“I am afraid you have just confirmed my theory.”_ She sounds tired. Exhausted. As deeply troubled as a woman could be.

“What _theory_ , Valerica?”

_“We knew already that time does not flow in Coldharbour as it does here on Nirn.”_

He waits, despite his building frustration. He _knows_ that. Tell him something he _doesn’t_ know.

_“We believed, for a time, that it was possible you and Inigo had not acclimated to Coldharbour just yet, and this was the cause for the discrepancy we’ve observed. It seems that may not be the case.”_

“Explain,” he barks out, standing. He looks to the horizon, searching for the next barrier. It’s far. It might take them the rest of the day just to reach it, and that’s if they move _fast_.

He hears a sigh.

_“I have reason to believe that the discrepancy is not caused by you, but rather, it is Coldharbour itself. **Coldharbour** ’s time is distorted, chaotic, bending in and around itself and warping in some places while others remain stable. The realm as a whole is beginning to destabilize in the wake of Greymarch’s impending arrival.” _

Isran turns. He contemplates pacing. He doesn’t want to waste the energy. “So what do we _do_? How can we catch up with her?”

An even longer pause. A hushed argument that he can’t quite hear. After several minutes, Valerica returns.

 _“I am not sure that you can,”_ she says, slowly. _“Until we can determine the cause of the anomaly, there is nothing we can do to predict its course. We can only hope that, should you keep following her trail, you may be able to catch up with her.”_

“But there’s no guarantee that time won’t just keep warping around us.”

_“No. There is not.”_

Isran presses his free hand to his face. When he’d said that things couldn’t get much worse, he hadn’t meant it as a challenge.

“If we don’t catch up with her, then what?”

 _“Well…”_ Valerica starts, halting and reluctant, _“In the worst case scenario, should Eres drop all of the barriers before you reach her—Greymarch’s arrival should set things back to course, in a manner of speaking. I think—I **hope** ,” _she amended, _“that when Greymarch begins, the realm will at least temporarily re-stabilize, long enough for you to reach her.”_

“And then what?”

 _“And then you leave.”_ Valerica says plainly. _“Just as we planned.”_

“I don’t know if you noticed, but _nothing_ is going as we planned.”

 _“That is why we improvise and adapt, Isran. I trust you are familiar with the concept_.”

Isran scowls. “Yeah. More familiar than I ever wanted to be.”

 _“Head for the next barrier,”_ comes Serana’s voice again, insistent, hurried. _“There’s a possibility that time is more stable around the barriers while they’re active.”_

He frowns. “Are you _sure_?”

 _“No,”_ she admits. _“It’s just a theory I have. I have no idea if it’s true. But it can’t hurt to try.”_ She’s quiet, for a second, and then, her voice a bit softer, a bit more uncertain, a bit more vulnerable, she says, _“What else can we do?”_

 _What else can we do, indeed_ , he thinks, as he tucks the Horn away once more. They have no choice. No other option. No other recourse. They can only follow the path laid out in front of them, and hope that it leads somewhere. Hope that it leads to Eres. Hope that, somehow, despite this time-warping bullshit—that he will be able to catch up to her, before Greymarch begins.

If he can’t, it’s going to be a _lot_ harder to find her once it starts. That much he’s certain of.

He almost thinks, _now_ things can’t get worse. Then he remembers the last time he had thought something like that, and decides not to push it. “Come on, Inigo,” he starts off again, and as he goes he reaches down and pulls the buckles from his chausses and lets them fall from his legs without care. He’ll keep his chest piece, but without the chausses he will move faster, and they need all the speed they can get.

Not to mention, Eres has killed everything they could have come across so far, anyways. He’s overdressed. And overstressed.

They’d better hope we can catch up with her, he thinks, glancing over his shoulder where that wall had been—would be—in the distance, if he could see it from so far away. When Greymarch comes, there is no telling how long they would have before the realm was wiped clean. And he doesn’t want to be here when it is.

As if to rub salt in an already gaping wound, Isran hears a thunderous _crack_ rumbling in the distance, from just behind them. Ahead of them, the northeastern spire of swirling energy goes dark.

He stops. Just long enough to utter a single word.

_“Fuck.”_

FORT DAWNGUARD  
_Vault Chamber_

Serana buries her head in her hands. Gods. Things couldn’t get much worse than this.

Three barriers. Three barriers down, and they still don’t have a clue where Eres is. Three barriers down, one left, and they _still_ hadn’t found her and Greymarch would come far sooner than _any_ of them were ready for at this rate. It had only been _hours_ since the last barrier had dropped and already Eres had dropped another. Is she going straight for them now? How much time did they even have left to find her?

It is perhaps only the dizzying swirl of her own thoughts that keeps her from noticing the darkness on her mother’s face until the woman calls for her attention.

“Serana.”

When she looks up, and sees the shadow on Valerica’s face, Serana wants to scream.

No, she wants to say. _No, don’t tell me more bad news._ She doesn’t know how much more she can take. First Eres is in Coldharbour, then there’s the Greymarch, then there’s the time distortion they can’t even figure out that might keep Isran from finding her at all, and _now_? Now there was _more_? What _else_ could there possibly be?

How much worse could it _get_?

“I did not wish to say this in front of them just now, when so much is already happening,” Valerica begins, and Serana drops her head to the table with a groan. She’d known it would be bad news.

“But there is something else.”

“ _What_ else, Mother? What else could you possibly say to make this worse?”

Her mother’s face twists into something of a grimace. For once, even her mother looks as upset as any of them. Not as much as Serana, perhaps, but the rest of them, maybe.

“Remember what Isran said,” Valerica says slowly. “Of the people he had met, who had met with Eres. The Inquisitor, who believed that Eres was there for a reason. The bishop, who claimed that he had been waiting a long time. Remember also that the bishop claimed that Eres had been acting strangely.”

“Get to the point.”

“The point, Serana,” her mother says, more patiently than Serana knew her to be capable of, “is that I believe they are right.”

Serana’s brow furrows. “What?”

Valerica takes a breath. “I did not want to tell you until I was sure. There was no reason to worry you needlessly. You are already worried enough as it is.”

“Just _tell me_ and stop beating around the bush.”

“Fine.” Her mother says, and she straightens pointedly. “I believe that Eres is, at least currently, not acting as _Eres_. I believe she has taken a particular role—a role in which _she_ is the harbinger, in which it is her duty, her fate, to bring the barriers down to set the unending cycle back into its natural motion. I believe it is Eres who is _fated_ to open the doors to Greymarch.”

“Fated,” Serana repeats. “Explain, mother. What do you mean, she’s taken a _role_?” It is almost the exact moment that she asks the question that she suddenly _understands_. “Mother…”

Valerica nods, confirming what Serana had not even known was her worst fear until this very moment.

“I believe Eres has mantled.”

FELLBURG  
_Julia’s Quarters_

She _should_ be sleeping, Julia knows that. If her parents had known she is awake, they would have been very upset with her. Well, no, that wasn’t quite right—they wouldn’t be upset that she was _awake_. They would be upset with _why_ she is awake.

Julia looks over her shoulder once more. Her door is still closed. The hall beyond it, from the lack of light slipping beneath the door, is still dark. Everyone is asleep. Everyone but her.

She turns back to the stone floor of her bedroom where she has pushed her rug out of the way, rolled back several feet, and in her hands, it is not the flaming wick of a candle that casts light on the ground before her, but the soft, gentle light of a lavender gem, near as big as her hand.

She hopes Eres won’t be mad. It’s just, she’d practiced so much with charcoal, and she’d gotten the forms just right, but with charcoal and parchment she can’t _see_ what the runes are meant to do. She can’t _feel_ the magic in it. She just wants to feel it. She just wants to feel like she’s accomplished something other than what the stupid parlor tricks her tutor has taught her like, like making _feathers_ float, or turning water to ink.

Those were silly things, childish things. Julia is _fourteen_ , and she wants to do something _real_.

Biting her lip, Julia rises on her knees, bends over to press the point of the gem against the rough surface of her floor.

Just one rune.

She’ll draw just one, just to see. She’s even gotten a little doll to throw inside it, just to test it, and she made sure to copy down the rune that would be quietest when it goes off, just so she won’t be heard.

She just wants to _see it_. At least she’s not setting things on fire anymore, right? She’s being _safe_.

Julia draws the first of the facets by pure memory. By the time she gets to the second, she’s referring to the charcoal diagram between each stroke, paranoid that she might get it _wrong_. She could draw this rune in her sleep, of course, she knows that, she’s practiced it so many times just _today_ that she’s certain she could, but still.

Eres had told her about the time she’d chained _herself_ up in a rune like this, and Julia doesn’t want to have that kind of embarrassment on her memory.

Imagine what her parents would think when they came to get her and they found her all tied up on the floor, locked by her own runic experimentation. They’d seal off Eres’ room and study for good and would _never_ let Julia in it again. They’d ground her for _life_. They just didn’t understand. Non-magic parents would _never_ be able to understand.

Eres would have understood.

Julia draws the next line. She stops, just at the very center of what would soon be a circle. She turns her head to look back at her parchment.

She sees a foot.

A foot that is not her own.

Her heart slams into her throat as she jumps back, swallowing a yelp, clapping a hand over her mouth as the gem clatters to the ground beside her and—oh.

It’s not her mother or father at all. It’s not even her tutor, or the rectoress, or anyone who would have told on her.

It’s the new maid. The pretty elven lady who kept Eres’ things all dusted and pretty and sometimes helped in the infirmary. She’d only been here _two days_. What the hell is she doing sneaking around at night?

“Hm,” the woman says, and tilts her head with a little smile playing at her lips.

“Please don’t tell,” Julia pleads. Then she frowns, and her brow furrows. That’s not what she’d meant to say. “If you tell, I’ll—I’ll tell Mum that you’re sneaking around in the halls at night.”

The woman glances at her, raises a brow. She looks entirely unbothered by that threat.

“I’m not going to tell,” she says, however, in that lilting accent of hers. Julia actually likes it, though Tomas made fun of it earlier today, when the maid had left the tutoring room after the rectoress had called her in to clean up a mess one of the boys had made. Tomas thought her accent was funny. Julia thinks it’s nice—better than _Tomas’_ , anyways.

“You know,” the woman says then, sweeping her dress around her legs as she crouches beside her, eyes twinkling in the night darkness—she’s _very_ pretty, Julia decides. She hopes _she’s_ that pretty when she’s older. “You should draw the outer circle _first_ , so your facets don’t end up lopsided.”

The woman points. Julia follows that pointed finger, and frowns. She’s _right_. Shor’s _stones_ , she’s right. The right side of her diagram is larger than the left. Her rune is completely unbalanced!

“But, E—she told me if I draw the circle first, I might get trapped inside it.”

“Only if you close it improperly,” the woman says kindly. “Drawing the circle last is something that’s taught to children, it’s true, but they usually measure their facets to make sure they’re properly balanced. Here.”

The woman reaches, beckoning with her fingers, and Julia hands her the gem. The maid takes it, making quick, assured strokes on the ground—first the circle, a perfect sphere that makes Julia immediately jealous, and then the facets within it, one by one.

For the last facet, instead of drawing from the perimeter inward, as Julia had been taught, the woman reverses it, drawing from the center _outward_ , and the very last line she draws is what connects to the outer circle just as her hand passes over it. The rune shines with brief, flickering light as it activates.

“Oh.” Julia blinks. She’d never even thought of doing it that way. _“Oh_ ,” she says again, and she takes the gem offered to her and she does it herself, copying the maid’s movements exactly. She makes sure to twist her wrist _just so_ at the end, so that her hand passes over the perimeter before the final line connects with it.

Just as it had done with the maid’s, the rune shimmers for a brief instant as it is infused with the magic of the gem’s dust. It won’t be very powerful, not with a direct infusion, but it _is_ active.

Just to test it, Julia grabs the doll she’d taken from her bed, and tosses it right onto the center.

There’s a soft _shwwwish_ as the rune activates, and tiny little threads of magic cord come shooting out of it, winding around the doll’s limbs and tacking it to the ground. The rune shimmers for almost a full minute before the cords shatter into nothing but wisps of light in the air, and the fine whitish dust of the soul gem turns as dark as soot, its energy spent.

Julia turns to the woman with a grin, and very nearly jumps up to hug her before she remembers the woman is a complete stranger.

“Who _are_ you?” She asks, thrilled and a little scared, all at once. It isn’t _right_ for a maid to be able to do things like this, but she’d _helped her_ , and she hadn’t treated Julia like a child too young to play with _such dangerous things_. Julia wanted to like her, she really did.

“Auria,” she says with a smile, and she holds a soft hand out for Julia to grasp with her own. Her fingers are long and slender, but her skin just a _bit_ roughened in place’s, like the hand of an archer. Julia looks at her pointed ears, and smiles.

Not _all_ Bosmer were archers, of course, but Julia would bet five whole septims that _this_ one was.

“Julia,” Julia whispers, and she grins right back up at her. “You promise you won’t tell?”

The woman’s smile turns a bit impish, a bit conspiratorial. Julia’s own grin widens.

“Promise,” Auria says, with a quick little wink. “My own daughter showed her gift early, far younger than you are now. You might say I’m quite accustomed to little girls with too much magic for their own good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greymarch/Jyggalag: In Elder Scrolls canon, Greymarch is an event that takes place at the end of every Era in the Shivering Isles, Sheogorath's Realm of Madness. At the end of each Era, Sheogorath has a brief return to Jyggalag, and Greymarch wipes out his realm to be reclaim it, only for Sheogorath to reappear and rebuild it. It is an endless cycle. Jyggalag and Sheogorath are two sides of the same coin. In Vigilance, Greymarch works as a balancing force against all realms of Oblivion, not just Sheogorath's - Greymarch comes to wipe all planes clean periodically as Jyggalag's "revenge" against the Princes who cursed him to madness. 
> 
> Mantle/Mantling: The process by which a mortal assumes the role and/or identity of a god, usually temporarily. In Vigilance, this process has its consequences. 
> 
> Because this act of the mod is presented with so little explanation, I've taken some liberties in stretching the lore a bit to fit in places where it doesn't line up with official canon. This is where those tagged lore adjustments are. (i.e., greymarch appearing outside of the shivering isles etc)


	7. Mantle

ACT 5  
CHAPTER VII  
MANTLE

“This doesn’t make _sense_ ,” Isran steps gingerly over another corpse. There was a whole trail of them, leading from the dock and into a door that, seemingly, led into some kind of slum beneath the city. “Why would she come this way? The tower is _south_ of here.”

“Maybe she thought it would be faster to cut through the slums?” Inigo tries. He lets out a grunt, using his foot to roll over the body stuck in the doorway. It flops over and falls unceremoniously into the water below. Isran wrinkles his nose, gladdened that he had thought to pack his own canteen. Even without the plague, he would not have trusted the water around here.

“Maybe.” Isran walks ahead, entering the door Inigo has held open for him.

In front of him, the slum sprawls out ahead of him. The floorboards creak beneath his feet, not even spread equally like a proper floor but rather a mismatched patchwork of driftwood and whatever the residents had been able to find. He can see the water of the lake—sewer?—beneath his feet between the boards that look far too flimsy to hold him.

The walls are no better, made of the same lazy, poor-man’s lattice work of driftwood, but it allows him to peer into the rooms they pass by without going into them himself, if he finds nothing of note.

Which he does not—unless, of course, one counted the bodies of those who had once resided here. He peers through one slat and frowns. It looked like this one had been killed in its sleep. It hadn’t even gotten out of bed. Just, stabbed through the heart, just like that. An execution.

Isran has never known Eres to be particularly ruthless. Reckless, perhaps, but not ruthless. Not cruel for the sake of being cruel. She’s never been the type.

Sure, these were plague victims, and sure, they were of Coldharbour, but from what he’d seen, many of those Eres had killed had not even had the time to draw their weapons. Had she simply killed them preemptively, knowing they would turn against her? Or was it Eres, slaughtering indiscriminately only because these were people of Coldharbour, and not because they had ever actually showed aggression to her specifically?

Isran almost wishes she had left a couple of them alive, just he could know for himself. If he’d been attacked up to now, he wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable with the sudden idea that maybe Eres is killing people who haven’t really asked for it. But the few residents he had met—like Sir Juncan and Inquisitor Pepe and Bishop Arasil—they had all been non-aggressive. They had never raised a hand to Isran.

Which reminds him. Eres has encountered _them_ , too. And if she had just been killing them to kill, wouldn’t she have also killed those ones as well? Why else would she have left them alive, if they were not exceptions to the rule? Perhaps those few people Isran had still seen alive were the only ones in Coldharbour who were still somewhat sane.

Or, at least, sane enough to not turn their blades upon Eres.

The slums are a maze, a maze of empty rooms and dead-end hallways and trap doors that, seemingly, only lead to the lake below. Some of them are located near the bedrooms, and Isran can only assume they are meant for emptying chamberpots—or whatever the plagued people here might use. More reason not to trust the water.

He finds leeches, some as small as a hand, some as large as his entire forearm, scattered across the floors and the beddings in the rooms. One of the plague victims even has one hanging out of the hole in his face where his eyes might have once been, and Isran is confronted with the uncomfortable question of whether the strange eyeless figures of the plague victims were merely due to plague, or if the leeches simply had a favorite snack. He tries not to think of it, and gives even the dead leeches a wide berth.

At the end of one hall they find a ladder, and after doubling back through the rest of the maze-like corridors to ensure they haven’t missed anything, he and Inigo climb to the second floor.

There are more of the same rooms and halls here, more of the same corpses taken off guard, killed in beds or while resting in seats.

Then, at the very end of the hall, next to a door that opens outward, Isran finds a statue.

It is a statue he would not have expected to find in Coldharbour, of all places. The lady Mara, carved in beautiful white stone, her arms spread open before her as if to off herself up to be embraced. He’s seen a statue like this in the Temple of Mara at Riften. He would have expected to see one there, well maintained, freshly polished, revered.

He did not expect to see one here, seemingly scrubbed free of all grime, the surface of the white stone immaculately clean and shining bright against the drab greys and browns of the slum walls. Even the offering bowl at her feet has been freshly washed and shined, a healthy bronze. Within it, there is a single white flower, its petals still supple and lively when he presses it between his fingers.

 _Kyne’s Peace_ , he recognizes it as, an exceedingly rare flower he has not once seen in Skyrim at all. He only even knows of its existence because it has been his wife’s favorite, back in Hammerfell. Not that it had been any easier to find there than it had been once they’d moved to Skyrim some time ago. He still takes them to her grave, when he can find one and he has the time. He has not been able to in years.

“Eres must have been here,” Inigo notes, from beside him. “She has an Amulet of Mara she wears beneath her robes. She is as devoted to the Great Mother as she is to Stendarr, Inigo thinks, but she doesn’t tell anyone about it.”

That, Isran does not find wholly surprising. It is not uncommon for anyone, even those with patron gods such as a Vigilant, to still hold a special reverence for the Mother Goddess. In a way, it is even expected—even Isran himself considers her greater than Stendarr, in Her own manner. She is, after all, the Mother of all Creation.

And perhaps just as much an antithesis to Molag Bal’s realm as Stendarr might have been.

“Looks like it.” Isran leaves the fresh flower where it lies. Seeing it there has given him some hope. Some peace, he supposes. The flower is fresh—that means Eres’ _trail_ must have been fresh, not weeks or months old like the others. She _must_ be nearby, he knows it. They just have to move more quickly.

“Let’s go.” He opens the door, taking a moment to touch his hand to one of the statue’s beseeching ones, almost purely out of habit. If he hesitates a moment longer than necessary just to spare a thought that she might help them find Eres, it’s no one’s business but his own.

The door opens to what appears to be the interior of a cistern, traversable only by the same rickety wooden piecemeal structures as the slums had been. Thanks to Eres, they encounter no hostile creatures on the way through, but that is not to say they don’t see their corpses—and more.

Dark vines trawl up the walls of the cistern, curling and twisting to form a web of blackened— _something_. Isran isn’t sure what it is. He doesn’t want to touch it, or even come close to it. It’s not even just that the vines aren’t the right color, as black as pitch and _thick_ where they wind up the walls and over the floors—but that they seem almost to breathe, expanding and contracting in a never-ending rhythm.

As if that were not disconcerting enough, the vines thicken as they travel deeper, thicken until there are not just vines but winding spirals of them like stalagmites, jutting up from the ground or descending from above, and _worse_ —the damn things have _eyes_. Some of them are small, just barely bigger than Isran’s own. Some of them are as large as his entire torso, staring unblinkingly just ahead of them. The conical structures are _covered_ in them until they seem to be more of a collection of dark, mutated flesh than anything that might have once resembled vines at all.

“By Stendarr…” he mutters, stepping over another mutated corpse.

These ones aren’t like those upstairs, which, while certainly ruined by plague, at least still look a bit human. These ones are more like slugs with spines upon their backs, only those spines appear to be little dark arms and hands jutting out of them, as stiff and rigid as if they had been made of bone. He sees larger ones that are almost humanoid, but with the same mutated growths from their backs and limbs.

Whatever this ‘Thrassian Plague’ was, it was far worse than any disease Isran had ever seen people afflicted with. Only Coldharbour could have created something so monstrous.

The sight of them sickens him, and so he does his best not to look at them unless he must. Ever downward they travel, across structures so unstable that he fears more than once they will collapse under his weight.

In due time, they are at the very bottom of the cistern, further below the slums than he thought it could ever go, and there is only one exit, one place that he could see that Eres could have gone. He keeps his hand near to his Warhammer, expecting the worst when he opens that door.

Instead, when the door opens, he hears the voice of a young child greet him.

“Oh, hello!” says the child, young and female. He looks around the room.

There is a shrine to Mara, crafted out of what appears to be sticks and twine and all manner of gunk Isran doesn’t care to examine. A collection of boxes and crates and barrels line the center of the room, surrounding a small bonfire tended by a man in white-and-gold armor, with a helmet that covers his face like all the rest. Just beside that fire, there is one of the slug-like, spined creatures, swaying where it stands. Facing him.

“Hello,” says the knight. He has a warm, friendly voice, and Isran relaxes—marginally. “I don’t suppose you’re with the other one?” He asks then, his voice souring just a little.

“You’ve seen her?” Isran doesn’t bother to describe Eres. At this point, he has learned that most of the people he meets seem to realize he is somehow connected to her, just because he is alive, just as she is. “How recently?”

The man sighs. “Not so long ago,” he says, vaguely. “I just haven’t found it in myself to move on, yet.” He tosses a stick into the fire, watches it burn. When Isran stares at him, he says, “I was here to—well,” he glances at the little creature at the fire, then stands, and walks toward him.

When he speaks again, he has lowered his voice, presumably so that the little thing cannot hear him.

“I was here to guard Mary,” he says, and he glances over his shoulder towards another door, just on the other side of the little sanctuary he’d created. “But your _friend_ ,” he says, “killed her.”

He frowns. “And this is…bad?”

“Yes,” he says. “No.”

“Yes or no?”

“Both, a little.” The man sighs again. “Mary was—she had turned into something, something she wasn’t. I still felt obligated to protect her, and she was kind to Atima,” he glances toward the strange creature again. “I thought, maybe there was some part of her that was still Mary, deep down.”

“But…?”

“But your friend killed her,” he says quietly. “She went in there, and when she came out again, she just left without saying a word. I went to look, and Mary was on the ground in there… but she looked like herself again.”

“That’s…unusual,” Isran says slowly. “Every creature I’ve come across down here has still been mutated after they’ve died.”

“I know,” he utters urgently, “I’ve never seen it before. How did your friend lift her curse? Do you know how? Do they have to die for it to happen?”

“I have no idea.” Isran’s frown tugs at the corner of his mouth, his brow wrinkling. Was it _possible_ that Eres could have lifted the curse on these fools, and just had never done it, or had this Mary been a special case? “Do you mind if I take a look?”

“By all means,” the knight offers, and gestures towards the door. “Just don’t disturb her body. I think we should let it alone.”

Isran nods, and with a nod to Inigo, the two of them move to the door, and to the large chamber beyond.

He realizes, as soon as he’s walked in, that _this_ is the room where all those strange vine-like structures had come from. _This_ had to be the epicenter. The structures here were far larger than any he’d seen anywhere else, and so numerous against the far wall that the entirety of it was _covered_ with the black, organic masses—only these appeared to be greying around the edges, as though they had once been alive and now were beginning to die off.

In the center of that cavernous room, there is the body of a woman, lying on the ground in the few inches of murky water that covers the floor. She has been turned onto her back, arms crossed delicately over her chest in a respectful, resting pose. Her eyes are closed, and for all it appeared that her body had been naked at one time, Isran recognizes Eres’ cloak, laid over top her to preserve her modesty.

Eres had killed this woman, perhaps, but she had done it as a mercy. That, Isran is sure of.

He crouches near it, careful not to let his hands touch the water.

The woman looks young, barely into her twenties. In death, her expression is tranquil and serene, as though she had merely passed in her sleep rather than in battle. He cannot see any wounds on what few parts of her body are uncovered, and he does not go looking for them. It wouldn’t be right, former mutation or no, he would not go inspecting a naked woman’s body to sate his own curiosity.

But still, it was _strange_.

The knight had said the woman had been mutated. Isran had seen plenty of such mutants within the sewers, and given the state of the black tangle of vine-like things on the walls of this room, he would bet that whatever curse had created them had come from this woman, originating in _this_ chamber. Especially since, now that she was dead, those things appeared to _also_ be dying, if slowly.

The curse of the cistern had clearly come from her, specifically. She must have been a powerful mutant in her own right, and there was no telling how monstrous her mutated form had been.

But how, then, did she look entirely human now? Was it truly possible that Eres had found a way to lift the curse in death?

Then Isran sits back on his heels, considering it.

He had thought it was strange that Eres would avoid dropping the last tower, and instead find her way into the city. He had first feared that, following the two towers that had dropped so quickly one after the other the previous day, that she would go directly to the last, and Greymarch would begin before they had managed to find her.

But instead, that tower had remained standing. Eres had not deactivated it, had not even gone near it—her trail had instead lead into the slums, through the sewers, and now to here. The bishop had mentioned that there was a way into the city through the sewers, and that Eres had been looking for a way in.

And if Eres had gone out of her way to come down _here_ , which Isran is fairly certain is a dead-end, he can only imagine there being one cause in particular.

Eres, somehow, is breaking the curses laid upon the residents here. Except, she isn’t doing so for just anyone, but the influential ones, the ones who these curses and plagues fed from, or _came_ from. She must be, in a way, killing the weed at the root, rather than just trimming it down. She is _eradicating_ it. Isran is sure of it. It's what _he_ would do, if he had been in her position. If, in some way, Molag Bal is feeding off of the souls of these people, and those curses were how he managed to do so, then, ideally, freeing them from the curses, killing them—that would also take that power source from Molag Bal himself.

Isran allows himself a small, proud smirk. Molag Bal could be a puppetmaster all he liked. Eres will cut his strings all the same.

But. While it is a stroke of brilliance and _does_ warrant some small amount of pride... This is a god they're talking about. Eres is pissing off _a god_ , and she's doing it on purpose.

Isran drags a hand down his face, no longer amused. “Stendarr have mercy…” He stands, wearily.

“Isran?” Inigo asks. “What is it? Did you find something?”

Isran brings a hand to his face, pinching at the bridge of his nose. He's torn between impressed and exasperated. That damned reckless, headstrong, stubborn _fool_ of a girl--but gods be damned if she isn't _brilliant,_ in her own way. The only problem with that is, of course, that Isran knows she's not fucking with Molag Bal just for the hell of it. 

“She’s not looking for a way out, Inigo,” he says, tone as dark as the sudden shadow that’s fallen over his already piss-poor mood. Eres has a plan. And if Isran's hunch is right, it's going to get her killed. 

Inigo frowns at him. “She isn’t?”

“No, she isn’t. If I’m right about this…” Isran glances back down at the body, scowl deepening. That _idiot_. Serana is going to lose it. “She doesn’t want to get out. She wants to get to _him_.”

“Him? _Him_ , him?” Inigo squeaks, “As in _Molag Bal_ , him?”

“The very same.”

“But—but that is _insane_! She cannot fight a _god_ ,” Inigo says, and for a second Isran thinks he’s going to say something logical. Then he says, “Not alone, anyways! We have to find her so we can help her!”

Isran lets out a long groan.

They’re _both_ insane. No wonder they were such good friends.

The Prison Tower can be reached through the sewers—and with some trial and error, they eventually find the right pipeline. What follows after is a trek through an absurdly large prison, all of the guards within who have been, as they had expected, killed by who could only have been Eres. They make quick work of descending through the tower itself, and at long last, hours later, they reach the front door.

The moment they step outside of those doors, they are greeted by Inquisitor Pepe.

“You,” he hisses, the moment he sees them. He stands just outside the door, as if he had been waiting for their appearance. As if he had somehow known they would be there. “I told you, it’s no use!”

Isran frowns at the man. “I’m not going to give up, old man. I’ll find Eres whether you like it or not.”

Pepe barks out a derisive laugh. “And you may just find her,” he responds, “but she is _not_ the person you are looking for. Not anymore.”

Isran’s brow furrows. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means you’re too late, my boy.” Pepe folds his arms behind his back. Isran gets the sense the man is all too smug. He might have punched him, if he hadn’t thought that touching him might give him whatever plague had mutated him in such a way. “The woman you know is gone. I told you—it’s no use. She must fulfill her purpose, and she _will_. You may as well just give up and wait for the end like the rest of us.”

Isran sweeps his gaze across the city streets, at the evidence of battle he sees nearby, winding around a bend not far away from them. “I don’t think so, old man. You think I’d believe what you say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pepe says haughtily. “That’s the thing about the _truth_ , boy. It is true whether you choose to believe it or not. Go on, then. Try to find that precious friend of yours. Let me know if you still recognize her when you see her.”

“Inigo would like to kill him,” Inigo says darkly, his hand hovering near his quiver. Isran raises a hand to stay him. “No?”

“No,” Isran lets Pepe walk away, even as the sound of that man’s laughter grates at his ears. “He’s obviously seen Eres again since we saw him last. That means it’s still possible for us to catch up with her.”

“Is it?” Inigo asks, looking doubtful. “She is months ahead of us, remember—”

“I remember. I also remember that Mary down in the sewers—her body couldn’t have been that old. We’re closing in on her. I can _feel it_.”

He knows they are. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know why. And frankly, he doesn’t care. But that body in the sewers hadn’t even begun to rot just yet, hadn’t been found by whatever animals might have existed down there that would have scavenged her remains. Which meant it couldn’t have been there very long at all. Days, maybe, if that.

That means they aren’t as far behind her as they had been originally. Someway or another, they have started to close the distance—or rather, the time.

Isran pulls out the Horn. Time to make a report.

FORT DAWNGUARD  
 _Vault Chamber_

_“Somehow,”_ Isran says through the Horn, _“Eres seems to have been able to lift whatever curse had mutated that woman in the sewers.”_

“And you say she’s avoiding the last Tower?” Serana exchanges a glance with her mother, who raises her brows.

_“Looks like it. That tower wasn’t that much further from the last one. If she had meant to head straight for it, given how quickly she dropped those two, she would have reached it by now. Instead, she went into the city itself, and she’s leaving a trail wherever she goes—just like before. The bishop said she was looking for someone in here.”_

Serana frowns. “I just can’t think of what she might be doing.”

 _“I have a theory, myself,”_ Isran says slowly. _“I can’t be sure if I’m right—I don’t know the exact details behind how his power works, but—I was thinking, if these people he’s cursed somehow add to his own power, then Eres undoing those curses…”_

Serana straightens. “That would weaken him further,” she breathes.

There’s a part of her that wants to be impressed. The fact that Eres had come to that conclusion, and then purposefully sought those people out to do just that, _is_ a little impressive, in its own right.

On the other hand, the much larger part of her only grows more worried. Because if Eres is being so methodical about reducing Molag Bal’s available power _before_ she drops the last Tower, before she brings down the barriers that would allow Greymarch into the city, then Serana can only think of one reason for her to do that.

Well, two.

One: Eres is weakening Molag Bal, so that when Greymarch comes, they will be more easily able to wipe the slate clean, keep Molag Bal on his toes. Molag Bal wouldn’t _die—_ Daedric Princes couldn’t die anymore than the Divines could, after all—but he would be severely weakened following Greymarch, and he might be weak enough that he wouldn’t be able to follow Eres on her way out.

Or, two, the more horrifying prospect: Eres is deliberately weakening Molag Bal before dropping the final barrier so that _she_ can confront him personally, and stand a chance at having a hand in his defeat. Serana thinks about what she knows of Eres, and she’s certain that, of course—it would be the second, if it was possible.

Molag Bal had been the one to bring Eres to Coldharbour to begin with. That she would hold a grudge against him, given how he’d been hounding her for over a _year_ now, without fail, was not surprising. That she would somehow find a way to exact her own revenge on a _god_ , however.

Serana slaps a hand to her face, groaning.

She just _had_ to choose the most stubborn, reckless person on Nirn to fall for, didn’t she? If vampires _could_ have grey hairs, Serana’s certain she would have a head full of them by now. She’s never been so stressed in her entire life, and she’s been alive for _millennia_.

 _Fucking Dragonborns_ , she mutters internally, hating and loving her all at the same time. Stupid Eres. She’s so damn _stupid_ but goddamn if she isn’t a bit of an inspiration, all the same.

“Have you caught up to her yet?”

_“Not yet, but I think we’re getting closer. It’s strange—out there, outside the city, it seemed like we were months behind her. But ever since we saw that body, it feels like we’ve gotten a lot closer. Days, maybe—or less. I don’t know why. Got any ideas?”_

Serana does.

Or rather, she has _one_ idea, and it’s so batshit insane she feels stupid even thinking of saying it out loud.

But given the circumstances…

“I have one idea,” she tells him. “I’m not sure if it’s the case.”

_“Do you think it’s the barriers?”_

“Well,” she considers, “I think that’s part of the issue, maybe, but not where it’s coming from. These distortions—have you noticed that _no one else_ you’ve met seems to be encountering them? They all seem to have met Eres at one point or another, some of them a while ago, some of them just recently… If it was an area-wide distortion, you would think that the people who would have met her would be spread out in more of an obvious pattern.”

_“Which means…?”_

“Which means,” Serana stands. She paces. This sounds crazy, even to her. “I think it’s not a realm-wide distortion.” Her mother looks up at her curiously, and she ignores it. “I _think_ the distortion is actually centered around Eres, herself.”

_“…Run that by me again. Slowly.”_

“Eres—she’s been at the center of all these incidents. And every time that there’s a time distortion, or every time that _you_ encounter something that has been distorted in time, somehow, it’s _always_ had something to do with her. No one else seems to be affected in the same way. So, I’ve been thinking—given what we know already about the mantling—”

_“The what now? **Mantling?** Who the hell is she mantling? **Molag Bal**?” _

“Oh, gods, no,” Serana sits back down again. She lasts for all of half a minute before she’s on her feet again, a hand running anxiously through her hair. “I forgot we haven’t told you yet. We aren’t _completely_ sure who just yet, but after what Pepe said and all of these things happening there and Greymarch—we think Eres might have… mantled one of the gods.”

For a long, tense moment, there is absolute silence on the other end.

Then, _“ **What?!** And you didn’t think to mention this to me?!” _

“We weren’t _sure_ ,” Serana huffs. “Look—it’s still just a theory. We won’t know for sure until you catch up with her. But the whole—being _fated_ to be there, and that Pepe thinking she’s meant to be the one to bring Greymarch in, and then these time distortions…

“I think we’ve been looking at this the wrong way, entirely. The time distortions aren’t a symptom of Coldharbour’s instability, though it definitely doesn’t help. I think, what’s actually happening, is that Eres has somehow mantled a god—she’s _stepped into_ the role of a god, who’s supposed to fulfill a very particular destiny, which is bringing about Greymarch, and setting the balance back in motion.”

_“So what’s that got to do with the distortions?”_

“I’m _getting there_ , if you’d let me finish.” Valerica catches Serana’s eye, and nods encouragingly. Good—her mother agrees with her. Maybe she’s not as crazy as she feels like she is.

“The time distortions are a _result_ of the mantling—of the actions that Eres is taking _through_ the—the perspective of a God? Essentially?” Serana rubs at her brow. “I haven’t figured out the specifics, yet, there’s not a whole lot known about the actual process of mantling and how it works, but, think of it this way: Eres is a mortal, who’s stepped into the shoes of a deity, temporarily.

“Temporarily, Eres herself is a paradox: She is existing both as mortal and divine at the exact same time. Her own reality is warping, and so that is warping reality around her. Which means that _time_ might be getting warped with it, especially when she fulfills one of these—these pre-ordained actions she’s supposed to take. And, as if _that_ isn’t confusing enough for you—guess what a good old-fashioned mantling happens to come with most of the time.”

 _“Oh, do tell,”_ Isran drawls.

“A _Dragon Break_ ,” Serana finishes. She’d done the research. She’d been poring over whatever books existed on mantling for the past day. And always, always, the same connection had popped up. Dragon Breaks.

Every single time a Dragon Break had been documented in history, there had _always_ been a correlation with one thing: mortals getting involved with divine matters, interfering with things far beyond their comprehension. What was more of an interference than a mortal taking the role of a God within _another_ God’s realm, to aid _yet another God_ into continuing the cycle the first God had started?

Fuck. That’s confusing to think about. She's still not sure she understands it herself, and certainly not well enough to explain it. 

“Jyggalag—the cycle of Greymarch is supposed to happen at the end of every Era. Molag Bal, however he managed it, somehow _delayed_ Greymarch. This tipped the scales, it tipped everything off balance. Things stopped working the way they were supposed to work. Then you have Eres—she is already Dragonborn, and if you believe some of the legends, well,” she shrugs helplessly, “they do say that the Dragonborn are God-touched already.”

“She had Stendarr’s blessing upon her,” Valerica adds helpfully. “And the holy blade of Meridia. Who knows what other Gods have laid their hands upon her that we simply aren’t aware of.”

“Thank you,” Serana smiles tightly, “for that reminder.” Her mother merely nods back at her, wholly unaffected by her sarcasm.

“So, what happens when one deity gets out of control, or too powerful—the other gods step in to set them back to rights.” Or so Serana hoped they did. That, at least, was the general legend surrounding Greymarch itself, anyways. “Only, Greymarch _can’t_ —so they need someone else who can set Greymarch back in motion to right the wrongs.”

 _“And they chose Eres.”_ Isran mutters. _“But why? And which god is acting through her?”_

“It’s—not really that simple,” Serana says. “We don’t know exactly who it might be. It could be anyone whose role she’s found herself in. And it’s not so much they’re acting _through her_ , but rather she’s acting _as them_. It… doesn’t make much more sense to me than it does to you, I promise. We think it might be Shezarr.”

“ _Shezarr? As in **Shor**? The missing god?” _

“It would sort of make sense.” Serana offers. “Shezarr hasn’t been seen or heard from in eons, but he always seemed to appear when there was a cataclysm he could help with—mostly to help humans, of course, but given how much Molag Bal has been interfering with our world, it wouldn’t surprise me. And, he’s the only god routinely unaccounted for.”

 _“Eres is an elf—Shezarr is a god of humans,”_ Isran counters. _"Why would he choose her out of all people?"_

“I thought the same thing, at first,” Serana admits. “But she’s also _half human_. She has the blood of both Mer _and_ Man within her—she’s the joining of two realms, of two sides of the same coin already. Then she’s Dragonborn on top of that, which makes her _far_ more attractive a vessel than any normal mortal would be, _and_ she’s been blessed by more than one God in the past, so—”

 _“Well…”_ Isran mutters. _“…No, you know what. I’m not going to say it this time.”_

Serana almost laughs, then. But there’s still too much bouncing around in her head for her to find mirth in it.

“So my theory—it all connects, it all makes sense—Coldharbour isn’t unstable on its own, it’s a-a series of Dragon Breaks, maybe, caused by Eres’ meddling. We thought that it was Coldharbour itself whose time was distorted, but—”

 _“Fuck,”_ Isran says, and it’s clear that he knows exactly what she’s getting at, at long last.

Serana nods, though he can’t see it. “The time in Coldharbour isn’t distorting on its own. Time is distorting _around Eres._ ” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shezarr/Shor/Lorkhan: Shezarr is considered the one to have created Mundus/the mortal realm through tricking the other Divines into using their power to do so. He was punished for his trickery by having his heart removed and shot by Auri-El down to Nirn. He is mostly forgotten in the current era, considered "The Missing Sibling".


	8. Memories of a Dream

ACT V  
CHAPTER VIII   
MEMORIES OF A DREAM

COLDHARBOUR   
_Cradle of Filth_  
 _?? days ago???_

_“Dreams without answers sink in silence…”_

Eres kneels beside the body of Mary, the Corrupted, the Broken. Mary had been Corrupted, once. Is still Corrupted, now, but she will not be, eventually. Soon. Ever. Will not have ever been?

Eres clasps her hand around the pendant at her neck. There is the Amulet of Mara there, and just beside it, there is the Eye, tucked into a small pouch that she has tied around her neck. It is almost fist-sized and distracting but it makes it so that it is close enough that she can hear it, that she sees the flashes when it touches her skin, when she blinks. Sometimes when she doesn’t. It’s not always kind when it chooses to show her things.

But here, and now, Eres expects it. She knows. She can feel it deep within her, rising in her veins and leadening her stomach, weighing her down until she has knelt into the murky water that covers the chamber floor. Her pants soak through with the murk, and not for the first time. Eres has stopped caring. She has no time to care. She knows what she must do.

So she closes her hand around the Amulet, letting her fingers brush against the Eye. She’s not sure if it’s Mara who shows her these things. She may never be sure. But she likes to think that She is here, welcoming even the Corrupted into her warm embrace—if only Eres can find them, deliver them to her, then they could be saved.

The past is not set in stone, after all. She can still save them. She can still show them the way out.

_May the Mother embrace you in the afterlife…_

Now, Eres closes her eyes. She places her free hand upon the clammy, cold forehead of the woman she had felled. The air shifts. The room shifts. _She_ shifts, all at once.

There is no water at her knees, sloshing against her calves and ankles as she kneels in it. She is not kneeling at all. She is standing. Standing, in a dry room, in a small room that is not the cavernous cradle of the sewer’s curse, that is not Mary’s resting chamber. She is in a small cell, a jail cell, a cell with bars that keeps her from leaving it. Her body is not her own.

She stands. Her body feels weak. But her heart— _her_ heart? Mary’s heart?—feels resolute and determined, unafraid.

_“Dreams without answers sink in silence…”_ she hears again, in that voice. In those voices. In every voice ever, all at once, but also only one. Only one that sounds familiar, no matter how much she can never place it.

Sink in silence.

Silence, silence, silence. Eres purses her lips together. She must not speak. That is the meaning. She knows. She knows what this must be, too, and she fears it, for a moment.

Mary. Mary, the Corrupted. Mary, the Dark Maiden.

Mary, the Priestess, who had been touched by Mara. Who had been blessed. Who had been able to cure the Thrassian Plague, if only for a time. Who had been turned against, by the Alessians. Who had been executed.

Who had been executed, Eres remembers, by fire. The books say she did not scream, did not utter a sound. Eres must also be silent. She must also not speak a word. It will be difficult.

As if to remind her of her duty, the amulet burns where it rests against her neck, something snaking around her throat to constrict, to press, to hold. To choke. To remind her—do not speak. Do not speak. You mustn’t. You _mustn’t_.

Eres will not.

Even when _he_ comes.

She recognizes him. Not she-Mary, but she-Eres, recognizes him. He looks different than what she remembers, because his face is human and not that of the plague, and he looks a bit younger, too, and his spine is straight instead of hunched. He has not been Corrupted yet, maybe. Or maybe he had just escaped the plague until now. Eres doesn’t know, but she knows _him_.

It is the Inquisitor Pepe. She can tell before he opens his mouth to speak to her. Before he sneers at her—her as Mary, not as Eres. He is only speaking to Mary. Eres doesn’t exist yet. Will not, for some time.

“You…” Pepe leans closer to the cell bars, though he keeps his hands clasped tightly before him, as though he must keep himself from reaching out to touch her. “Are you… Are you Mara?”

She is not Mara. Eres is sure this is Mary’s memory. But perhaps Mary was also Mara, in a way. _Is_ also Mara. Could be? Maybe. How could one count the number of souls that the Mother has touched?

“To appear in the image of Alessia… Are you mocking us?”

He waits. His face contorts. He’s angry, Eres realizes. Angry with her-as-Mary, or perhaps he is angry with Mara who is within Mary, or perhaps…

She stops. That’s confusing. It’s better not to think too deeply about it. She is Mary. And maybe also Mara. Or perhaps she has always been both. That is enough explanation, is it not?

When she doesn’t answer him, Pepe’s lip curls up with disgust.

“ _Good_ ,” he spits. “Stay silent. You have no right to speak as it is. Why in Oblivion would you interfere with us now? You have only manufactured your own defeat.” Silence. She stares at him, unmoving.

“Do you not understand what will happen to you tomorrow?” He asks her. “Whether you are truly Mara, or you are just her imitation, or you are just someone who pretends at divinity… It matters not. Tomorrow, you will be condemned. Tomorrow, the pyre awaits you. We shall see how well you burn, divinity or not.Those who kiss at your feet today will throw you upon the fire tomorrow, at my _merest_ gesture.”

He leans closer. Stares hard into her eyes, like he means to intimidate her. Like he wants to drive the point home just how powerful he is. Just how much power he has over her-as-Mary.

“ _Mara_ …” he mutters. “You claim to be her, do you not? Her agent, perhaps? And you think you have such power at your disposal. Foolish girl—you have no idea what power _is_.”

He pulls a stone from his pocket. Shows it to her. Sneers. Eres’ eyes drop to that stone. She knows it. She has seen it before. Will see it, after. Has seen it? Will find it. It is the Red Stone. The Stone she escaped twice. The Stone that burned her. The Stone she swallowed. Her-as-Eres, not her-as-Mary. But Mary must have taken this Stone, too, because she is here. Because she was Corrupted. Will be Corrupted. Would have been.

“Can you turn this Stone into bread?” Pepe asks her. He laughs when she does not respond. “Of course not. How could you? You’re merely mortal, just as I am. _‘Man shalt not live by bread alone’._ Were those not your words? And here, as if by Shezarr’s own will, a Daedra rose up against you, in the name of this so-called _‘bread’_. It can’t have escaped you how the masses follow the Daedra in droves. Mundus is full of the starving…”

Eres’ brow furrows. Something in her mind clicks into place. Clicks into understanding, into knowingness.

Oh, Pepe. This poor man. He’s never learned to keep his mouth shut. He’s even worse with her-as-Mary than he is with her-as-Eres. He talks, and he talks, and he tells her things he might have wished he hadn’t, by the time he finishes. He doesn’t know what he’s given her.

_“I am the bread—the bread for the starving of this world. They hunger, and I feed.”_

Had this been where it all began? How long ago had this happened? How long ago had Pepe been Corrupted by him? Were they all Corrupted already, by now? By this time, in the dream, in the memory? By the time they killed Mary at the stake for daring to defy them? How long had the Alessians been falling before they truly _fell_?

“It was them, shouting for bread and salvation, who tore down your Tower. I’m sure you intended to raise a new one. But it’s useless.”

Is he talking about Mary? She had only been a healer. Or, was he talking about Mara? What Tower? There is a Tower in Coldharbour. A Tower in the Empire. It could be any Tower. There are plenty of them.

“If you hadn’t tried to build that Tower, you might have been able to alleviate the suffering of these people. But you did. You _had to_. And what did the people do, then? They came to _us_ , the Order, crying that the ones who promised to steal the Heart of Shezarr had lied to them! If you truly _are_ Mara,” Pepe says, and he holds the Stone up to the bars of the cell door. “Then take this Stone. Take this, and its fires will fade, and all of this tragedy will come to an end.”

Ah. He _is_ Corrupted. Or perhaps he is merely an agent of Molag Bal, in disguise as Pepe to get to her. Or perhaps Pepe himself had always been his agent and had never once _not_ been corrupt. Perhaps Pepe is like Bhal had been, a puppet at his master’s direction from the very beginning.

Is that what had happened to Mary, the Corrupted? Had she feared so much for her own life that she had accepted the Stone when it was offered to her? Eres would not. Could not. _Will not_.

“I see.” Pepe leans back, dropping his hand to his side. “So you will still not accept it. For you who denies the Miracle also denies the Aedra. _People_ would rather believe in the miracles. So much so that they even create their own miracles, and would soon believe even in an Inquisitor like me. You did not want to make people slaves to that miracle. Their freedom of faith was more important to you, was it not?”

Eres is still not sure just who he speaks to. Is it Mary? Mara? Mary-as-Mara? Both, somehow?

“Your love of the people was simply too deep. It would have been better if you hadn’t loved them at all. Perhaps then, they would never have starved as they did.”

He pockets the Stone. Crosses his arms over his chest. Examines her with a hard, critical eye. His expression hardens. His eyes burn at her. His face contorts.

“Your love _never_ mattered. Free will? Such nonsense. The people do not even _know_ what they want, what is best for them. The only thing that matters is the Stone. This— _this_ is what the Order was created for, not your precious tenets and sympathies. To Oblivion with your miracles and freedoms—our Tower was built on authority. Freedom is only a means through which the people work against themselves. We, we were _compassionate_ , don’t you see? We freed them of that burden. We showed them our compassion despite their many sins.”

He paces. Even when he turns, walking this way and that, he keeps his hard glare upon her, demanding her for an explanation she will never give.

Keep talking, Pepe. Tell her what she needs to know.

“Why did you reject the Stone if you wanted to give people hope? Could you not have turned all of Mundus to paradise with it? You could have united everyone, masters and servants alike.”

United as slaves to Molag Bal, perhaps. That’s not the life anyone would ask for, if they knew what they were agreeing to. Pepe is only to blind to see it.

He stops in front of her. Braces his hands on his hips. Stares down his long nose at her.

“Perhaps _you_ couldn’t do it. But the Order _can_. We will build an Empire spanning across the entire continent with this Stone. A shame you will not be alive to see it. With this Stone, our empire does not have to wait for the return of Shezarr.”

Shezarr again. Pepe has mentioned him. The insane man in the sewers, Cadwell, had sung about him—about his return, too. The world had been fine without Shezarr around, for the most part. And as far as Eres knows, Shezarr is a _good_ god. Not the kind of god who would look kindly upon those who allied themselves with the likes of Molag Bal.

So why, then? Why is Pepe so concerned with Shezarr? Or, why _was_ he?

“You tried to stop it.” Pepe says finally. “If there is anyone in all of Mundus who deserves to be burned at the pyre, it is you. Tomorrow, you will die, and it will finally be over. Our empire will rise, without you to interfere with us.”

Eres stares at him.

Pepe stares back.

Holding his gaze, Eres sees it—his uncertainty, hiding beneath the cloak of his bluster. She gets it, now. He hadn’t been trying to convince _her_ at all. He’d been trying to convince himself.

Trying to convince himself that he was doing the right thing. That killing Mary is the best for the Empire he so profoundly believes in, despite his own misgivings. Perhaps if Mary had spoken, she would only have incensed him, flurried his anger and self-righteousness, strengthened his conviction when he had someone to punch down at.

But she is silent. She is a wall. A mirror. He has only himself to look upon, in a way. He sees his own hubris in her, now. His confidence has always been an act. He’s never been sure. He’s less sure, now. Mary had healed those people, cleansed the Lake Rumare of the Plague in a single night—how could one who was not blessed by the Gods have accomplished such a feat?

He knows it. She knows it. Both she-as-Eres and she-as-Mary. They all know it.

His expression shifts. Minutely. Ever so slightly. His eyes flicker, to one side and then the next.

And then he’s lunging for the cell door, keys in hand, unlocking it, dragging her out by the elbow, marching her down the halls. Eres wonders, for a moment, if he’s shaken enough to execute her earlier than _tomorrow_. Is his faith so broken that he wanted her _gone_ , by any means, just so he won’t have to confront the truth?

But he leads her down a hall, to a door that is unguarded. He throws it open, throws _her_ out of it, and then he yanks her hands to him and he’s putting the key in the shackles.

She hears a click. The shackle unlocks. Her hands are free.

“Go!” he ushers her, eyes wild as he looks back over his shoulder, towards the door. “ _Go,_ and don’t come back! Never come back! Never, never!”

Pepe spins on his heel, running back to the door, and he slams it shut behind him.

She is alone. Shackles at her feet. Suddenly she wonders—who had been redeemed, here? Whose soul had she saved, this time?

Was it Mary, who had resisted the Stone? Or is it Pepe, who, in the wake of Mary’s refusal, had finally done something _good_? Could she even claim that it had been her actions that had caused Pepe's sudden heel turn, or had that merely been a part of him that had always been there, and had only been quieted by his anger when Mary argued against him? The Pepe she knows has never been kind, but he has never been evil, either. She is not sure which of them is real. 

Eres looks down at the shackles on the ground, or she tries—but she sees the murk of the water of the sewers. Her knees, soaked with it. Her hand, upon Mary’s forehead.

Mary, who is no longer an abomination. Mary, whose body is human again, freed from the curse that had turned her so monstrous. Mary, whose eyes are closed, face serene, as though she has finally found the peace she did not expect to have been offered.

Eres removes her hand from her. She loosens her grip on the amulet. Mary is saved. She has saved her. Just like Johan, when she had found his grave, when she had denied the Bard at Martha’s funeral. Just like Pelinal, and the bull-man Morihaus. She hopes they all can rest. They have all suffered long enough under the weight of their mistakes. She will show them all the way out.

Eres must find a way into the city. She must go to the prison. The prison is waiting for her. The warden. The city beyond it. The people within it.

_“Blood_ …” the Eye whispers. _“Blood is thicker than water… Madness sets with the moons… Dance of the dead in the moonlight…”_

Three. Just three more? She cocks her head, listening. They only whisper the same three phrases, over and over again.

She closes her eyes, pressing her hand to the Eye through the pouch. Flashes cross her vision.

A fort, an emperor, a hound, two hounds, soldiers in the too-bright golden armor, the Aurorans. A mansion, a cat, a story, a wife dead and not buried, yet. An ape-man, a jungle, a woman and child, a sacrifice.

They are in the city. Eres will find them. She will find them because she must. She will be their deliverance.

Eres stands. She leaves Mary behind. She does not say a farewell to the knight Caius or the mutated Khajiit-that-is-Atima. She cannot help them directly—but in redeeming others she is redeeming them, too. In a way. In a manner. She just has to keep moving.

Keep moving. Keep going. There’s no stopping now. If she slows down, Molag Bal might realize what she’s doing. She can’t take that chance. She’s not weakened him enough just yet. But soon. Soon, he will know. Soon, she will find him.

Soon, the end will come. As it was foretold.


	9. Advent

ACT V  
CHAPTER IX  
ADVENT  
  


FORT DAWNGUARD  
_Vault Chamber_

When the vault door opens, Serana expects it to be her mother, returning with another blood potion. Since she had refused to leave the chamber for any reason – hunting or no – her mother had taken it upon herself to make sure that Serana remains well fed. Even if that means hunting a little extra than she normally would, just to procure the potions that would keep Serana sated.

It is her mother who walks in, but she is not alone.

 _“Mirabelle?”_ Serana stares at the woman, baffled beyond reason. What the hell was _Mirabelle_ doing here? Had her mother asked her to come? Serana looks at Valerica, but the woman shakes her head mutely. “What are you doing here?”

“I am doing well, thank you,” Mirabelle answers primly. “It is a pleasure to see you again, as well.”

Serana frowns. Her brow furrows. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not _unhappy_ about seeing you, just—confused. What’s brought you all the way here? Did my mother ask you to come?”

“She did not,” Mirabelle confirms. She eyes the table Serana sits at with not a small amount of distaste.

Were Serana not currently monitoring _Eres in Coldharbour_ , she might have cared about the mess. It’s not _that_ messy, she thinks. Mirabelle looks at it as though Serana has dumped sewage on the table instead of a few empty bottles and a scattering of books and parchments.

“Valerica did come to me about the situation with Eres,” Mirabelle continues, “but she did not ask me to come. That, I did of my own will. I must admit, I am…curious.”

Serana’s eyes narrow. “What, so you just came here out of academic curiosity? My—Eres is in _Coldharbour_. This isn’t some experiment you can study.”

Mirabelle just raises a brow at her, nonplussed. “I am aware of where she is, yes,” she says. “And I assume your mother has told you what we found in the Arcaneum?”

Serana sighs, turning away from her. Isran hasn’t reached out to her today. That hasn’t stopped her from staring at the Horn like looking at it hard enough might will him to make an update. “You mean about Shezarr, and the mantling? Yeah, she told me.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And, how will you proceed?” Mirabelle asks. “You must understand how this changes things.”

“You mean, that we can’t just yank Eres out of there whenever we want to, now?” Serana scowls, and eyes one of the bottles with a significant amount of consideration. She wants to throw one, right about now. She’s losing her _mind_ in here.

She should have gone with them. Why hadn’t she gone with them? She could have found Eres _so much faster_ than they could. She could have fought off Molag Bal’s corruption, she’s _sure of it_. She’d been so _stupid_ to let her mother talk her out of it. Valerica had probably only said those things to keep her from going because she wanted to keep an eye on her.

And now Eres is still there, alone, going through who-knew-what, because Isran and Inigo weren’t _fast enough_.

“Yeah,” Serana mutters. She pulls her eyes away from the bottle. She’s not a child. She’s not going to throw a temper tantrum like one. No matter how much it feels like it would help. “I’m aware, thanks. If we pulled her out before Shezarr or _whoever_ lets go of her, she might never recover her sanity.”

Right.

Because now _that’s_ a problem, too. As if there weren’t enough already on the table.

Mantling—what little is known about it, anyways—has never really been the greatest of experiences when it comes to mortals. It’s not just the meddling with divine matters that makes things complicated. But becoming the mortal vessel for a _god_ tends to complicate things. That was not even counting the Dragon Breaks. If mantling Shezarr didn’t completely shatter Eres’ psyche just from the burden of housing a deity, then the Dragon Breaks might just do the trick.

Turns out, mortals don’t cope very well with time slips and paradoxes and things far beyond mortal understanding. Anyone might lose their mind confronted with—with alternate realities and parallel timelines and things existing and not existing all at the same time and, _fuck_. It’s giving _Serana_ a headache just thinking about it, and she’s not the one who has to live through it.

Not for the first time, Serana wonders if Eres will still be _Eres_ by the time they find her. By the time they manage to bring her back.

How much of her would be left, once Shezarr is done with her? Once Coldharbour is done with her? How much of her Eres would still be whole, in there? How much of her would be fractured, unraveled at the seams, torn apart from the inside by all of this? Would she even be _sane_ when all this was done? Lucid? _Conscious?_

Eres wouldn’t be the first mortal driven insane by such a thing. Hell, from what Serana had read, it was _common_ for mortals to be entirely unable to so much as _comprehend_ Dragon Breaks, let alone use them to their advantage like Eres seemed to be doing. Or _Shezarr_ was doing. Who the fuck ever.

Mirabelle sits beside her.

“Eres is strong,” she says suddenly. Serana favors the woman with the driest look she can muster. She’s _well aware_ of that, thank you. She’s known Eres a lot longer than _Mirabelle_ has. “She will get through this, and come out the other side.”

“You have a lot of confidence in that for someone who just got here.” Serana isn’t just referring to Fort Dawnguard. Mirabelle might not know that, but she does.

“She is Dragonborn,” Mirabelle says simply. “She is made of hardier stuff than a typical mortal. Were she simply a common Vigilant, I don’t believe she would have gotten as far as she has. Perhaps she might not have even caught Molag Bal’s attention, in fact.”

Serana straightens in her seat. “You think Molag Bal chose her _because_ she’s Dragonborn?”

“Possibly,” Mirabelle says. “I cannot be certain, of course. But, were I looking for someone to control, to craft into my own puppet—assuming I was not just doing so for the hell of it, I would choose someone who would _last_. How many puppets must have Molag Bal gone through in all this time, over all these millennia? There must be hundreds of thousands of them, if not more. Many of them, I expect, have failed him in some regard. Who better could one choose than the descendant of a God?”

“Eres isn’t _actually_ the descendant of Shezarr.”

Mirabelle shrugs helplessly. “We cannot prove that.” She says this plainly, as though she’s not suggesting that Eres has _divine heritage_. As if that’s just an every day occurrence. “I imagine Shezarr also chose her for a reason.”

“Eres has a grudge against Molag Bal already, she’s there, and she has the blood of a dragon. That seems like more than enough reason for me.”

“Yes, but,” Mirabelle points out, “there is always the chance that there is more to it. None of us may ever know the full truth of it, of course, as none of us can be there to examine it—to examine h—”

“She is _not_ one of your experiments.”

Mirabelle leans away from her, eyebrows rising. “I take it you haven’t been hunting.”

“How can you tell?” Valerica drawls. Pointedly, she places a large bottle in front of Serana a bit more forcefully than she needs to. “Drink, Serana. You’re getting irritable.”

“I’ve _been_ irritable,” Serana mutters, but she uncorks the bottle all the same. She’s never been a fan of bottled blood—it’s cold, it’s too thick, it tastes _stale_ —but it’s better than nothing. And she’s _not_ going to leave just to hunt.

“ _More_ irritable, then,” Valerica amends, tone dry as sandpaper. “I understand your concern, but you must also take care of yourself.”

“I’m fine.”

“Serana.”

“I’m _fine_.” Serana carefully places the empty bottle back on the table. Not because she cares, but because she might have shattered it otherwise. Everything just feels so _raw_. All the time, now. Like she’s being ripped apart at the seams.

_Eres…_

If she’d known. If only she could have _known_ …

“Have there been any developments since we last spoke?” Mirabelle asks Valerica.

Serana hears them, faintly in the background over the din of her own thoughts spinning around inside her head.

Eres had never told her about Molag Bal’s interest in her. It still isn’t as though they’ve told each other _everything_ , of course, but Eres had stopped lying to her, at least, way back in the Soul Cairn. So why, then, had Eres never said anything about something so monumental? Was it just that Serana had never thought to ask a specific enough question that would have forced Eres to say it openly?

Or had Eres hid it from her intentionally, knowing Serana’s history with Molag Bal and Coldharbour?

That would be just like her. Serana wants to swear out loud. It would be _just_ like Eres to hide it, to keep it a secret, just because she thought _Serana_ might be bothered by it.

Of course Molag Bal was a sore subject for her. She prefers never to think of him if she can help it. But if she’d _known_ about this beforehand, she’d have known that Molag Bal wouldn’t let Eres go without finding a way to take her, and then Serana could have helped her. Somehow. She could have found a way.

She certainly wouldn’t have separated from her, those few months ago. She would never have left her side, just to make sure Molag Bal didn’t come back for her where Serana wouldn’t have been close enough to help. She would have been able to _help_.

But Eres had kept that secret. She hadn’t told Serana. But she’d told that damn cat, Inigo, and they hadn’t known each other half as long as Serana had known her.

Why hadn’t she just trusted her? Where had Serana gone wrong?

COLDHARBOUR  
_Plaza of the Eight Saints_

The walls of the city rise high around him—as the bishop had told them, the prison had led them into the interior of the city, opening onto a street that seems to curve away from either side of the prison in a large ovular shape, disappearing around bends in the distance. Isran had delivered his report to Serana just an hour ago. Since then, he and Inigo had chosen the path to the right of the prison tower—there were, unfortunately, trails on both sides of the tower, and Isran could not pick out which was freshest—and had followed it.

The city is sectioned off with towering gates that, thankfully, remain open. Isran is not certain he could have found a way over them, or opened them himself. Whether they are signs of Eres’ passage, and _she_ had opened them, or whether they had always been open, Isran doesn’t know.

But the city reeks of the kind of place Isran would not have liked to spend his days.

The streets are lined with cages, some with skeletons still sagging against the walls within them. He passes more than one gallows in just the hour he’s wandered, more than one guillotine, even. Some of the cages he finds the dead prisoners in are hanging from the walls, put on display. Some of them are hardly bigger than the size of a small dog’s kennel, the skeletons within contorted on themselves just to fit inside them.

Whoever the Alessians had been, they had ruled with an iron fist, and this city is an example of just how they treated their detractors. He is not even surprised anymore at the fact that this city had been ravaged by the Plague—if there was any city deserving of divine retribution, it may have been this one. Perhaps, then, the plague had been nothing more than what they had wrought upon themselves.

When Isran looks up, to the walls surrounding the very center of the city, he can still see the reddish tinges of the final barrier swirling around it. Good, he thinks—Eres has still not found her way to the last tower.

Eventually, they come upon a wide circular area, at the center of which is a well. A well, seemingly long since dried, where the boards covering the top of it had been pulled askance, revealing the opening that led downward. Isran spots the rungs of a ladder on one side of that well, and deep beneath the surface, near the bottom—something that looks like light, shining from underneath.

Someone is down there.

 _Eres?_ He wonders, though when he looks about him, he can see the signs of her passage nearby as well—more corpses, the open gate that she might have been the one to open. But, with the way the lid has been pulled aside, and the ladder leading into the well, Isran has to wonder.

Inigo comes next to him, leaning over the pit of the well, and sniffs.

“There is food down there,” he says. “And something that smells like metal polish.”

Metal polish and food? Isran’s stomach rumbles, despite himself. The metal polish might indicate that someone else was down there, someone, perhaps, wearing plate armor not unlike his own. But food—he and Inigo had run through their stores just yesterday, and had avoided any source of food they might have found above the surface. With only dead plague victims, dead hounds, scorpions, and leeches, it seemed Coldharbour had little to choose from in the way of sustenance. Not to mention the likelihood that anything they might attempt to eat could be carrying the very plague that had ruined and killed so many.

Isran had almost been content to starve, but—it was worth a look. Surely, Eres must have somehow found a way to feed herself while she was here. That meant there must be _something_ that was safe.

Isran climbs over the lip of the well, and down the long ladder leading into its depths.

The light brightens as he descends. By the time his foot touches the stone bottom of the well, the light is almost bright enough to pain him when he turns to face it.

It is not coming from a fire—not the warm, orangeish-yellow glow of a torch or a bonfire, but the bright, iridescent light of a beacon, sat atop a familiar looking statue that has somehow found a place beneath the well.

It is remarkably well-constructed, well maintained. Polished and cleaned to immaculateness. The skin of the statue is polished the same stark white as the Mara statue he had come upon in the slums. The dress the figure bears, painted a deep black that reflects bluish where the light of the beacon, held aloft in hands reaching towards the sky, hits it. The beacon itself is over-bright, not unlike staring directly at the sun. At the foot of that statue is a small altar, bearing a singular white flower not unlike the one he had found at Mara’s.

And besides that, a woman, dressed in plated golden armor.

“Oh,” the woman says, sounding rather pleased. “Visitors. Please, rest. You are safe within these walls, my friend.”

Isran looks at her, the helmet covering her face. Each of the figures he has met, aside from the priests of Alessia, have worn helmets that keep him from seeing any distinguishing features. He wonders if they are at all human, beneath their armor. But in this moment, he cannot bring himself to care.

Inigo brushes past him, moving quickly to a small crate he finds beside the statue. Atop it, there is a little wooden case, flat and rectangular, latched closed. He opens it with purpose, and grins when he sees what is inside.

“Jerky!” He exclaims, and tosses a large piece to Isran that he only barely manages to catch without fumbling it to the ground. Inigo takes another, sniffing at it deliberately. “It smells clean!”

“Do not worry,” says the female knight. “I have made it my purpose to offer safe haven to those who seek it, as my Goddess would command. That includes feeding the hungry as well as offering shelter. You have nothing to fear. I assure you, you shall not find the plague here. Meridia’s light burns even the plague away.”

Meridia. Isran flinches, suddenly noticing the almost-imperceptible movement at his hip. He takes a moment to press his hand against the hilt of the blade. It vibrates softly against his touch, as if thrilled to be reunited with even the representation of its patron god.

He hears a soft, breathy gasp.

“By the Light,” the woman breathes. “That is the sword of her champion… May I…?” She asks, stepping closer, a hand raising hesitantly. He frowns at her. “I—I only wish to see it. Please. This is the last bastion of Meridia’s realm here. If I could only…”

He eyes her, but he clasps the hilt in his hand and draws it from its sheath. The gem at its hilt brightens, joining its radiance with that of the beacon from the statue, and the woman looks as though she might fall to her knees at just the sight of it.

Instead, she steps forward, cautious, and though she makes no attempt to take it from Isran, she brushes her fingers reverently over the too-bright gem, murmuring the words of a prayer beneath her breath.

“Wherever did you find this blade?” The woman breathes, still awed even as she draws back her hand. She does so reluctantly, as though she can just barely bring herself to divest herself of its touch.

“It’s not mine.” Isran sheathes it once more. He keeps his hand wrapped around the hilt, not entirely convinced she won’t try to take it from him. Her reverence for it is plain. “It belongs to a friend of mine.”

“A friend…?” She asks. “Is this friend … also as you are?”

“If you mean _alive_ ,” Isran says, “yes. I think she might have come here, recently.”

There is a beat of silence. The woman’s hand moves, slowly, up to her chest, pressing against her heart in a way that looks almost like a salute.

“I am… _deeply_ sorry,” she murmurs softly, her voice thick with genuine sympathy and remorse. “For your loss.”

Isran freezes. Inigo looks up from his meal, hand halting half to his mouth, jaws hanging open stupidly.

“Where is she?” Isran demands. “What have you done with her?”

“Oh? Oh—no, I—I apologize,” the woman bows her head. “I have misled you, I am sorry. I only meant…” She shakes her head. “She is alive. Or she was, when she came here. She prayed at Meridia’s feet, but she did not wish to stay.”

“Then what the hell did you mean?”

“I only meant that—she is,” the woman shifts on her feet. Her shoulders sag. “She is not well. I am sorry that she may not be the woman you remember, should you meet her again in this life.”

Isran’s hand tightens around the hilt of Dawnbreaker at his hip, so much so that even the vibration of its thrill near Meridia’s statue seems to still.

“You’re the second person who’s said that to me.” And Isran isn’t happy about it. He also isn’t sure what it _means_.

“It is the truth.” The woman pauses, then straightens. “Pardon me—I am Gloriel, Meridia’s last Valkyrie here in Coldharbour. I offered your friend shelter here not long ago. But she was—she spoke very little, I am afraid. When she did, she did not speak as—" The woman shakes her head. "Little of what she said made any sense to me. It was as though she spoke to someone else in the room. Someone I could not see.”

“Maybe she was praying?” Inigo offers, hopefully. “She has brought Dawnbreaker with her wherever she goes since Inigo has met her. Perhaps she wanted to pray to Meridia.”

“She did, briefly,” Gloriel confirms. “But that is not what I mean. She did not speak in sentences that made sense, but strange, disjointed phrases—things that did not seem to connect. She spoke to things, or people, that were not there. She could not rest for very long—the resting seemed to make her antsy. She paced this chamber for several minutes, muttering to herself. I admit,” Gloriel says, “that I am not certain she even knew I was here, consciously. She did not seem particularly aware of her surroundings. She was…here, in a manner. But she also was not.”

Isran’s frown deepens. He knows little of how mantling works, psychologically. Not even Serana or Valerica had been entirely certain of what it would mean for Eres, only that she had stepped into the role of a God, somehow.

But perhaps it was possible—no matter how little he wishes to think of it—that Eres is not herself because she is something closer to possessed. Possessed by a divine entity, fractured into two parts—the part that is Eres, and the part that is the God, acting through her, whoever that God might be. Perhaps her talking to herself was not truly as it seemed, but her talking to this God, somehow.

Or, Isran considers reluctantly, it is equally as possible that Eres has simply lost her mind entirely.

In his time with the Army as a young lad, before his retirement, he had seen more than his fair share of soldiers who had been broken by the realities of war. The way they acted, and the way this Gloriel described Eres’ behavior, were not too far apart.

“I am afraid even I may not have much time remaining,” Gloriel murmurs, and she tilts her head back to look upon Meridia’s statue. “I am the last of my kind—those before me went mad, or were driven to suicide. I thought, perhaps, that it was the plague, finding new ways to end those who dared to fight against it.”

Gloriel looks back at Isran. Everything in her posture screams of resignation.

“Perhaps, instead, it is merely the fate of one who serves a Divine here in this dark realm. Perhaps madness is all that we have to look forward to. Your friend too once served Meridia, and now she is mad. I wonder how long I have left…”

Isran thrusts those thoughts away from him.

So what if Eres is a little mad? There are healers, mind-healers, that will still be able to help her once they get her home. Mind-healing has come a long way from when he was a lad over thirty years ago. They can still help her, mad or not. He will not allow this to dissuade him.

“Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

“No,” Gloriel admits. “She was only here for a time, and as I said—she was near incomprehensible, besides. She kept muttering something about dreams and stones. I’m not sure where she might have gone after she left here. I am sorry I could not be of more help. But please,” she gestures towards the crates. “Take whatever you need. I no longer require sustenance, but you do. If I can help you in any other way…”

Isran nods. Inigo divests the crate of an entire pouch worth of jerky—the only food this Gloriel seemed to have on hand—and both of them manage to fill their canteens from a purified keg near the statue that Gloriel insists has been cleaned and blessed by Meridia herself. Inigo drinks it with far less reluctance that Isran himself.

When they are done, the two of them return to the surface, and continue their journey through the city’s outer ring.

There are buildings, here, not unlike the prison tower—massive things, reaching high into the sky, with heavy iron-clad doors. Isran has no idea where any of them lead, and without their doors being open, he cannot tell which of them Eres might have ventured into.

When he sees the dead end ahead of him, he almost considers turning back to open each of those doors, to search the buildings themselves just to make sure—but he sees a familiar face there. Or rather, familiar armor.

“Sir Juncan.” He greets, climbing the stairs to meet him.

The armored man stands at the foot of one of those skeleton-robe statues. Beside him, a man in white armor is slouched against the base of that statue, either dead or very much unconscious. In the man’s lap is a statue of Dibella.

“Ah,” Sir Juncan says. “Hello.”

Isran frowns. “How did you make it here before we did? We left you behind at the gates.”

“Time works in mysterious ways, here.” Sir Juncan shrugs. “Or perhaps you were too slow.”

“Eres—have you seen her since the last time we met?”

“I have,” Sir Juncan says, a bit too cheerfully for Isran’s taste.

Isran looks down toward the man in white armor. A white flower is tucked into his chest piece. So the man is dead, then—and Eres has seen him, whoever he is. “Who is this?”

“Sir Gregory,” Sir Juncan says, with a bit of a sigh. “He was trying to reach the Fountain Garden of Dibella. I am sorry to say he never made it there. I will take him, soon.”

“What’s stopping you from going now?”

“I met your friend,” Sir Juncan says easily. “And then I saw you. I knew you would come to me. You should thank me.”

Isran’s lips purse. He’d save his thanks for now. “I might, if you have anything worthwhile to tell me.”

“About your friend?” Sir Juncan asks, and Isran nods. “Well, if you’re still looking for her, you may want to hurry up. She just left not too long ago, headed for St. Dulsa’s Charnel. You _might_ just be able to catch up with her, if you’re quick enough.”

Isran’s mouth opens. “H—How recently was this?”

“An hour ago?” Sir Juncan wonders aloud. “Not long. I imagine she’s still there. Those Charnels are guarded. It will take her time to reach Dulsa’s grave—I imagine that’s what she’s looking for there.”

Isran spins on a heel, grabbing Inigo’s arm to drag him alongside him.

“Don’t you want to know where it is?”

Isran stops. Turns. Growls. “ _Where is it?”_

Sir Juncan chuckles a bit, and points to the east. “Go down that street,” he says helpfully. “It looks like a dead end, but the path branches to the right. Normally that street is blocked by a gate, but your friend has lifted it, I’m sure. St. Dulsa’s is at the very end of that branching path. Good luck.”

Isran and Inigo break into a run.

It takes them only ten minutes to reach the branching path, and sure enough, the portcullis blocking it from the main road has been lifted by someone before them. The bodies on the path that extends beyond it look as fresh as Isran has ever seen them.

He’s so close. He’s so close he can _feel it_. He can sense it in the air. Eres is still here, he’s sure of it.

He puts on a burst of speed, seeing the heavy iron door of St. Dulsa’s Charnel just ahead of him. The closer he gets, the more bones he sees littering the ground and near the walls. The charnel is little more than a mausoleum, but so, so much larger. The building reaches almost as high as the prison tower did.

Isran crashes through the door, his calves aching from the run, and the building opens up before him.

There is a long hall. Beneath his feet there is a tattered runner, a long reddish rug that spans from the door he’s just entered all the way to the end of that long hall and up a short flight of stairs, a short flight of stairs that leads to the interred remains of what he can only assume is St. Dulsa herself—

And Eres.

_Eres._

Eres is kneeling at the foot of that grave, unmoving.

He can see her. He can see her with his own two eyes. She’s _right there_.

He doesn’t stop running. He runs even still, fearing that somehow, Eres might disappear just before his eyes, vanish into nothingness, that after all this time he would see her only for her to be little more than a mirage, some after-image left behind by the distortions she leaves in the timeline behind her, but no—

No, she’s there.

He reaches the top of those stairs and he is just inches from her. He could have touched her. _Might_ have touched her, but there is an _incredible_ aura that surrounds her, something that feels something like heat and _not_ , something that feels thick with magical, mystical energy, something that feels like he shouldn’t interrupt it. Something that feels like touching her would be the worst thing he could do, in that moment.

“Eres…?” He calls, and she does not react.

She does not turn. She does not so much as twitch. Inigo steps forward, reaching for her, and Isran snaps his hand out to pull him away.

“Don’t—we don’t know what disrupting her might do.” Inigo’s face twists. “We’ll wait here.”

He pulls the Horn from his belt. “Serana, I found her. I think—”

_“You **think**?” _

“I’ll let you know once she—”

Eres rises to her feet. Isran quiets, watching her as she stands there, still facing St. Dulsa’s grave. For a moment, she is utterly still. Without her cloak, she looks so much smaller. So much more fragile. She is not wearing armor. Her robes are torn in places, dirtied and bloodied in others. In some, he can see where she has bled from injuries she has taken in battles, and the wounds have gone entirely unattended, the blood dark and crusted against her skin where the cloth has pulled away from it.

Eres cocks her head as if listening for something neither of them can hear.

Then she turns, towards them. She does not look at them. Does not so much as acknowledge their presence. And her eyes—Isran freezes where he stands, seeing those eyes.

Eres’ eyes had been grey, perhaps with a bit of a bluish tint, but grey all the same. Now they were too blue to be human, the pupils swallowed by the brightness of that color, near glowing—but that light fades as she nears them, and she blinks, and her eyes are grey again so quickly that he wonders if he had imagined it.

But still, she does not look at him. She does not seem to see them at all, her eyes unfocused and glazed over, face slack, expressionless, unaffected—she walks with purpose and yet somehow with no alertness about her person at all.

“It’s her,” Isran murmurs quietly, as Eres brushes past him without a word. He turns to follow, mutely. “But she’s not herself.”

 _“The mantling?”_ Serana wonders aloud. _“Let me speak to her, Isran.”_

“I just said she’s not—” Isran stops walking, because Eres has stopped walking. She has turned to face him—or, not him, but the Horn. The _Horn_ , which Serana’s voice has come out of.

Eres’ eyes are fixed upon it. There is something like confusion, there, muted behind the disconnection of the mantling, but it is _there_. He can see it, he’s sure of it.

“Serana, say something.” He orders, and he holds himself very still. “She’s not reacting to _us_ , but she’s reacting to _you_. Keep talking.”

 _“Uh,”_ Serana says, not quite at her most intelligent.

A flash of something across Eres’ vacant eyes. Recognition? Uncertainty?

_“Eres, it’s me. Can you hear me?”_

Eres’ brow furrows.

“Keep talking, Serana.”

_“What the hell am I supposed to say?”_

“ _Anything_ ,” Isran says back to her, hushed. “Just talk. She’s listening.” Or he thinks she is. He’s not entirely certain, but she’s stopped walking. He stands still, turns the open end of the Horn towards her. Eres watches it, transfixed.

 _“I’m here, Eres,”_ Serana says softly. _“We’re going to get you out of there. Say something, Eres. Just let me know you’re okay.”_

Eres says nothing, but she does step forward. Isran remains still, watching as she nears him, and he allows her to take the Horn from his hands. She holds it in her own, staring down at it, and she _listens_.

“She has it, now,” Isran tells Serana. “She took it from me. She won’t speak, but—she’s listening, Serana. She knows it’s you. Some part of her knows it’s you.”

There’s a brief silence on the other end. When Serana speaks again, her voice sounds a bit thicker, a bit affected. He understands. He pretends that he doesn’t hear it. He won’t mention it.

Serana talks—talks about inconsequential things. She tells Eres what they’ve done to find her, how they plan to get her out. Then she talks about the research they’ve done on Greymarch, and Jyggalag, and even Shezarr. Eres does not react to Shezarr’s name, but she listens.

Isran throws his cloak over Eres’ shoulders. She drowns in it, so much smaller than himself. He is struck, not for the first time, by just how young Eres truly is, under all of the burdens and responsibilities she bears.

She has led the Vigilants. In a way, she led the Dawnguard, diving headfirst into dangers and responsibilities that he himself had asked her to, without complaint. She is the Dragonborn, still prophesied to save the world from certain destruction, sometime in the future—whether near or far, Isran doesn’t know. And she is here, in Coldharbour, burdened with the mantling, burdened with Molag Bal’s attention, burdened with the weight of the fate that still awaits her, even when they do finally manage to bring her home again.

All of this, and she is little more than a child. Barely an adult.

By elven terms, she would be a child still, barely into what those of the Mer would even consider adulthood in a lifespan that lasts centuries and not mere decades. Inigo might be the only person in their immediate circle who is younger than Eres herself, but even Khajiit do not live as long as elves do. In relative terms, Eres might _still_ be younger than him, in a way.

Isran is too old for this. Eres is too young.

He sighs, and pulls her alongside him, guiding her to walk at his side with a gentle hand upon her shoulders. She follows, mechanically, walking where he leads her, so fixed upon the voice coming from the Horn that she does not seem to notice either of them, or where they might lead her.

In the end, Isran brings her back to the old, dried well. It takes some coaxing to get her down the ladder, but he manages, and she goes, and then they are with Gloriel once more, in relative safety, and Gloriel seems gladdened to see them again, if also saddened at Eres’ state.

Isran is a bit sad, too, even if he will only admit it to himself. He is tired, exhausted even, and they have so much more they must do—but if he can manage to keep Eres here, to make her rest when the God within her might deny her of that luxury, then it will be worth the exhaustion.

He feeds her. He sets her beside him on the ground, leaning against the wall, with the Horn in her hands and his cloak drawn around her. She sits with him, pressed against his side, and he dwarfs her, as he has always dwarfed her, but it seems so much more apparent now than it has ever been.

Eres looks tired. There are dark bruises beneath her eyes, a heaviness to her eyelids. He allows her to keep the Horn. When Serana runs out of things to talk about, she does not get up. She does not leave. She stays, tucked against him, and Isran speaks to her in the silence.

“I had a daughter, once,” he tells her. She does not look at him. He doesn’t expect her to. Inigo sits across from them, leaning against a crate. He, too, looks wistful when he looks upon Eres—like he is seeing the person he once knew right in front of him and is still aching for her presence. Because Eres is not there. Not really.

But Isran hopes he might ground her. Ground her in this moment. Somehow.

“She would have been about your age, now,” Isran murmurs. He has not thought about his daughter in many years. He had made it a point not to. But in this moment, he can think of nothing else.

Because Eres is so young. So young, and so small, and so burdened by the world at large. He wonders—would his own daughter have lived a life like hers? Had her death been a mercy, in its own way?

“Did I ever tell you why I came to hate vampires? I haven’t,” he knows he hasn’t, because he never speaks about it. Has never spoken about it. Not openly. Not to anyone. But he will. This once. “Years ago,” he begins, “I had a family…” He feels the weight of her lean against his side. Something in his throat tightens.

Eres is not his daughter. But, perhaps if she had lived… Perhaps she would have been something like Eres. Brave, and self-sacrificing, and so, so headstrong that he would have spent his entire life worrying after her.

Eres is not his daughter, but perhaps she is something like her. He’s not sure when that happened. But he knows it to be true.

So he speaks to her. He tells her the story he has never told anyone. He tells her how the vampires had killed his family. How he had returned home to find them, slaughtered and drained in their beds. How that had led him to joining the Vigilants, and how later that had led him to leaving them, when he had been convinced that vampires were a bigger threat than even the Vigilants realized they were.

How he thinks of them now, in his darkest moments. How Eres reminds him of his young Niamh—how he’s sure they would have been friends, had she lived.

Eres sleeps against him, that night, under the radiant light of the statue of Meridia. She sleeps against him, and he stares up at that beacon, and he wonders how he could have been surprised at all—he’d walked into Coldharbour for Eres. He should have seen it so much sooner. How hadn’t he seen it sooner?

He will get Eres out of here. That, he vows. He had lost one daughter. He would not lose another.


	10. Feint

ACT V  
CHAPTER X  
FEINT

COLDHARBOUR  
_Dried Well Sanctuary_

Eres only sleeps for three hours.

Isran knows this because when she wakes, jerking suddenly against him, so does he. The Horn clatters to the ground from Eres’ lap, forgotten. Her posture is ramrod straight, sitting so rigidly she seems almost statuesque, and her eyes are fixed somewhere ahead of her—yet, much further.

Eres raises a hand to her head. She tugs at a lock of hair, her eyes closing tight. She murmurs something under her breath, repeatedly, as she sits there, half to twitching with her unused energy.

 _“Madness…”_ Eres murmurs, and even her voice doesn’t sound quite like herself. “Madness sets with the moons… Blood is thicker than water… Madness… Mad cats and… the mansion… Sepredia…”

Isran’s heart sinks a little, watching her climb unsteadily to her feet. Whatever peace Eres had found with the Horn, with Serana’s voice, with him—is gone, now. Shezarr, or whichever god had chosen her, had clearly tired of her inactivity.

Isran sighs as he stands to follow her, kicking at Inigo’s feet to wake him. The cat jumps up with surprising agility, though even what little had remained of his false cheer since coming to Coldharbour had whittled away sometime in the night, forced to witness the downfall of his friend from someone he knew to someone he could have never recognized. Isran hopes that the change in Eres won’t be permanent—but if it is, they will find a way to help her.

It’s a strange thing, following behind her.

Eres moves with purpose, at a brisk walk, seeming intrinsically to know where she is going at all times. At the same time, her expression does not have even half the focus that her body seems to—she walks pointedly, secure in her knowledge of the place, never meandering or ambling anywhere, but her expression remains detached, her eyes unfocused and vacant of any kind of visible thought or emotion.

But, at least, she does not seem to mind their presence.

Inigo tries, more patiently than Isran had thought him capable of, to engage Eres in conversation. He even manages to get Serana to attempt it, too, though Serana is no more successful than Inigo is—whatever piece of Eres had somehow pushed to the surface the day before is well and buried, currently, while she tracks down her next objective.

Eres leads them through the city, until they come upon to what Isran looks like nothing more than a non-descript door, no more notable than any of the other buildings they have come across and passed without stopping. But this one, Eres enters, and from her hip she draws a plain silver blade, one that is chipped and dented and very clearly had been pilfered from someone who no longer had need of it.

Isran pulls Dawnbreaker and its sheath away from his hip, and stepping in front of her, he very carefully reaches for the blade Eres carries. She stops, and her grip tightens around the sword she holds, and so Isran instead places the sheathed Dawnbreaker in her open left hand, instead.

Eres’ brow furrows as her hand closes around it. She holds both swords in front of her, her eyes upon Dawnbreaker in its sheath. It is the first flicker of emotion she has shown since she awakened. Something in her—the buried Eres, beneath the mantling, Isran is sure—recognizes Dawnbreaker now that it is in her hands.

The silver sword clatters to the ground, abandoned. Eres pulls Dawnbreaker’s singing blade from its sheath, holding it in front of her, staring at its too-bright gem. For a moment, as she looks at it, she blinks—and in between those few blinks, Isran sees the ghost of Eres beneath the surface. As quickly as that image had come, it is gone, and Eres turns again, and walks into the building, blade held at the ready, sheath still in her off hand.

Isran hears a howl, from somewhere deep within the building. He pulls his Warhammer from his back not even seconds before a group of five warhounds come tearing around a corner down from the entrance hall, snarling and snapping as they sprint towards them.

Eres fights like she has little care for her own safety, like she herself is immortal, but her movements are as tight and precise as any soldier’s, pivoting this way and the other, slicing and thrusting and killing two hounds in what looked like one fluid movement before advancing on the next. Watching her fight is like watching a dance, but one that lacks the soul, the art of it, focusing only on the technique.

She is immaculate, a wardancer, untouchable, and Isran wonders what could have left those injuries on her if the god within her was so skilled a fighter that even _he_ felt uncoordinated fighting beside her.

Onward they fight, climbing the floors of the sprawling building built not unlike a fort. When they happen upon jail cells, Eres stops long enough to open just one—the one a strange sight lies behind, a man wrapped entirely in some kind of leather tarp with only his head still free of it. He wriggles toward them as the door opens, grunting with the effort.

“Who is a child of a minotaur?” The enwrapped man crows, craning his neck to look at them with wild eyes. His skin is the same reddened, pockmarked mess of the plague victims. Isran bets that, beneath the wraps so tightly wound around his prone body, the rest of his flesh has rotted away as any other victim’s had. “Who’s a half bull?! Who told you such nonsense?”

“Calm yourself.” When Eres speaks, it is with an irrefutable authority.

The man twists his neck to glare at her. “Silence, Varla! Don’t let your success at Malada go to your head!” Eres does not react to his rambling shouts. “You’re nothing! Nothing but what I have made of you! What could an _Ayleid_ orphan have become without my help? It was me, me! Belharza! I made you what you were! You would have never seen knighthood without me!”

Belharza… Isran stares at the man—or what remains of him—stunned into silence. Belharza had been the second emperor of the empire, after St. Alessia herself. _Man-bull_ —it had been rumored that Belharza’s father, Morihaus, had been a minotaur.

Of course, Isran had always dismissed them as rumors, myths that had expanded and grown more ridiculous over time. But was it possible that _this_ Belharza was the very same one that had once ruled over the Empire? Just how many of the Empire’s past heroes and notable figures had ended up here, in Coldharbour?

The man—or bull-man, though Isran sees little about him that would suggest such a mixing of man and animal—stares up at Eres with wild eyes, his face morphed into something like a snarl.

“The heart of Shezarr!” He bellows, wriggling towards her. “I want the Heart of Shezarr! Bring me the Heart of Shezarr! That Auri-El must be destroyed, I told you—Bring me the _Heart_ , Varla!”

Isran almost doesn’t want to ask, but he does. “Who is Shezarr?”

“Shezarr is the agent of the one True God,” Belharza murmurs, his head swiveling slowly to look upon Isran. Eres does not speak. “He is the leader of the weak, spreading the might of the True God to every corner of Mundus… Varla…” he turns back to Eres, as if it had been she who had asked the question. “Did you forget? You should know this like a lullaby by now. Do you really believe what that bard told you?”

Eres’ brow creases. Her eyes flash with a sort of recognition, though to what, Isran isn’t sure.

“Don’t worry,” Belharza murmurs to her. “You are a child of Shezarr. The abominable Auri-El may have abandoned you, but I will never forsake you! Remember me, Varla— _Belharza_ , the man who raised you! I am the one you owe your life to. So please—come to your senses. Be that bold man you used to be! Get back to cutting off Ayleid heads!”

As if finishing a rehearsed speech, Belharza’s eyes dim suddenly. He relaxes to lay upon the floor, staring vacantly out ahead of him. “Hungry…” he mutters, his voice hardly above a whisper. “I am so… _hungry_ …”

Eres twists Dawnbreaker in her hands, and plunges it through the back of his neck.

Belharza wriggles, once, then goes still.

Isran looks at her, but Eres spins on her heel and marches away without comment, and the climb continues.

Strange… He had thought, for a moment, that Belharza had somehow recognized that it was Shezarr inside of Eres, or that she had mantled him. But instead, it seemed almost as though Belharza was only rambling, reliving his past memories in the present. Rambling about a man named Varla… An Ayleid, a bard… None of it connected to Isran, but Eres had reacted to what that man had said.

What had Eres heard in his rambling speech that Isran had not?

They continue further upward into the fort, fighting through the few imps who protect it even now, the occasional Alessian priest, and finally—they enter a final room in which a man in plated armor lounges in his throne, a hound at either side of his feet. The man looks up at them, raising his head, but does not get up, does not even so much as straighten in his seat. He doesn’t even seem to care about their invasion into his—home? Fort?

Eres halts just past the doorway. Her hand goes to something around her neck, a pendant—one that did not appear to be Mara’s, based on its size beneath her robes. She holds it for a moment there, staring at the man.

“Blood is thicker than water,” she murmurs, and steps forward.

The man straightens, leaning forward.

“Miserable _wretch_ ,” he utters. “What are you doing in my fort?”

“Have you found the Heart of Shezarr?” Eres asks him, unexpectedly. She holds Dawnbreaker at her hip, her form deceptively casual.

The man scoffs. “That Heart is nothing but a stupid tale of a stupid old man. I have no intention of looking for it. The Mythic Era ended long ago.”

Eres nods, as if he has confirmed something for her. “Then I am here for you.” She raises Dawnbreaker before her.

Isran pulls his hammer from his back. Inigo nocks an arrow. Neither of them ask why they will fight this man—if Eres wants this man dead, then he will be dead. That is all there is to it.

The man pulls himself to his feet. “Then coming here was your last mista—“

Isran lunges forward, lifting the Warhammer over his head, and he _swings_.

The man, perhaps too confident in his own abilities, never even manages to draw his sword. The Warhammer strikes the junction between his helmet and shoulder, and he crumples to the ground in a broken heap, the bones in his neck and shoulder shattered beneath the weight and force of Isran’s blow.

Strangely, Isran actually feels a bit disappointed. He had expected this man would be more powerful—that was why he had struck first, fearing that he might injure Eres further. That he had crumpled under one blow had been a bit anticlimactic.

Eres, however, merely kneels at the man’s side, and she pulls the visor up from the man’s face—pockmarked and reddened just as Belharza’s had been, but now bloodied and bruised as well. Uncaring, Eres slides her hand beneath that visor and presses her hand against his sunken cheek, clasping the other hand around the strange, spherical pendant beneath her robes.

Eres closes her eyes. When she opens them again, they are glowing. Isran steps back, feeling the surge of _some_ kind of energy surrounding her, and he pulls Inigo with him.

“Something’s happening,” he says to Inigo. “This must be the source of those time distortions—whatever she’s doing right now, we can’t interrupt her.”

“Redeeming him, maybe?” Inigo suggests. “That is what she did with Mary, it seemed.”

Perhaps, Isran thinks. Perhaps she is, somehow…

COLDHARBOUR  
_Fort Sepredia_

Eres sinks into the memory, into the dream, into the past, as if it is home. She is familiar here. She knows what she must do.

_Blood is thicker than water._

The stone floor of the fort disappears. Varla’s body disappears. The walls, the light, everything—it all disappears.

She is standing in the middle of a clearing peppered with debris. Around her, there is a forest. There are the ruins of stone buildings behind her, the crumpled bodies of Meridia’s soldiers—the Aurorans in the golden armor—on the ground. There is grass beneath feet that are too large to be her own.

There is a man, standing before her.

At her feet, there is a child, no older than ten, with olive skin and platinum hair and pointed ears not unlike her own—both her-as-Eres and her-as-Varla. It is his memory. She knows it is. There is no one else’s it could be.

She knows it is his memory just as she knows that the man before her is Belharza. Emperor Belharza. Tyrant. Conquistador. Adoptive father. Varla had called this man father. Belharza had raised him. Belharza had taken him in, despite his Ayleid blood. He had shown mercy.

At one side, Eres sees an incredible giant of a man in bright armor, white with gold trim. When she looks, the man in the armor, his head alone the size of her torso, looks back at her.

“Varla, my friend,” says Ritho, because Varla knows his name even if Eres does not. “What is the purpose of all this death?” He asks, voice low, resigned. Hushed. “I don’t understand the ideas of little people anymore…”

Ritho turns away from Varla. From Eres. From Eres-as-Varla.

Varla—no, Eres—turns to the man that would be her—no, _his_ father. His adopted father. Varla’s adopted father, not hers. She is not Varla.

She is not Varla.

Belharza steps to him. To her. To both of them. “Taking Mackamentain was good work,” Belharza claps a hand upon her shoulder. Upon Varla’s shoulder. “And now, we are one step closer to Malada.”

Malada. Eres knows that name. So does Varla, but they know it as different things. Eres isn’t sure which Malada it is that Belharza is referring to. She’s not sure if it matters. It is Malada, and Malada is Malada even if it is Eres’ Malada or Varla’s Malada, it is still Malada.

“I am honored, Your Majesty,” she says, in Varla’s voice. She speaks without thinking. The words come to her without conscious thought, tumbling from her lips unexpectedly.

“Don’t be so formal, Varla. We may not be related by blood, but I still think of you as my son.”

Eres frowns. Or, maybe it is Varla who frowns, but she is frowning for a different reason. Why is she here? Where is the bard? Where is the Stone? Will she know why she has seen this, when she is done? Will she know who she has saved?

“Some of those Aurorans of Meridia were here again.”

The Aurorans—Meridia’s followers. In a way, maybe Eres herself is an Auroran. Or had been an Auroran. Was Dawnbreaker an Auroran blade? It must have been. She has seen those soldiers in other memories, and their blades are almost as bright as her own. But here, as Varla, she has fought against them. Just as Pelinal had, in his memory, in the palace, when she had fought— _he_ had fought Umaril.

The memories of the memories tumble around in her head, bumping into one another and sowing chaos wherever they go. She’s not sure if the Aurorans are good people. She’s not sure if anyone she has seen in any memory is a good person. She’s not sure if _she_ is a good person, anymore.

“That goddess… She just won’t accept when she has lost. Umaril’s defeat must have frustrated her. Why else would she help the doomed Ayleid?”

Ah, Umaril. So that means that Varla is after Umaril. After Pelinal. So Pelinal’s battle against the Aurorans in the palace had happened _before_ this memory. She tries to file that away in her mind, to sort the memories chronologically, but her brain doesn’t want to listen. They still tumble and spin about in her head, unchecked, dots refusing to connect just yet. There is more that she is missing… She needs all of the pieces if she hopes to understand.

“These _Ayleid_ ,” Belharza spits the name like a curse. “Such uproar because of _one_ temple.” He throws his hands up, looking the picture of exasperation. “If they had only surrendered it to us, all of this bloodshed could have been avoided. They did not have to fall to our blades. Fools, all of them. Perhaps we need to hasten the enforcement of the Alessian Doctrines. I will talk to Borgas about this.”

Eres does not know Borgas. Varla is not familiar with him, either, or does not care enough to think about him so that Eres can also think about him and understand.

But Eres needs more. So she asks, through Varla. There is something she needs to know. Something she _must_ know.

“Why do you insist on taking Malada? What is so important about this temple?”

“The Order wants to use it as their own temple,” Belharza says plainly, his voice perfectly reasonable. “They say that if we pray there, they will find Shezarr. If we can find Shezarr that way, then shouldn’t we take Malada? Is it not what would be best for the Empire?”

Shezarr. There are so many mentions of Shezarr, everywhere, by everyone. He must be important. Eres still does not know who he is, other than that he is a god, and that they are looking for his heart. She has no idea what his heart does, or why they want it so badly. Perhaps, if she sees enough memories, she will understand.

“What should we do with this one?” Varla speaks, without Eres’ permission. Her body gestures down at the cowering girl, only half conscious, covered in dirt and blood at her feet. The girl is so young. Surely, they would not kill a child.

“Varla,” Belharza sighs. “I ordered _all_ of the Ayleid killed. Man, woman, or child, it matters not. They must all be eradicated. As a knight of the Empire, you must overcome that compassion of yours. They are our enemies. Why are you hesitating now? It is but one child. You have killed plenty. She is just one more.”

How many children had Varla killed? How many of the Ayleid? Is Varla himself not Ayleid?

Eres feels indecision roiling in her gut. This is the moment. This is the divergence. This is where she can affect change. Varla is uncertain. Varla may have killed this girl before. This girl who does not have a name. This girl who even Eres does not know the significance of.

Perhaps it is not the girl who is significant, but the action that Varla takes. Varla is hesitant, but Eres can sense that he will agree, if pushed.

She will not let him. This girl that he had killed will not die. This girl that is dead will not die. She will be alive, now, or would be alive, or would have never been killed. Eres will make sure of that. It is all that she can do.

Blood is thicker than water, after all.

“I am of the Ayleid blood as well…” She says hesitantly, in Varla’s voice.

Belharza tenses. “You—You know about that?” Then his face contorts in a mix of anger and disgust. “I should have known. You’ve been listening to that strange bard again.”

Ah. There he is. Molag Bal. She knows him. She knows him because he is the bard. He is always the bard. He was the bard before and now he is not but he also is, at the same time. The bard is as much a part of Molag Bal as she is a part of Varla. 

“The Ayleid _abandoned_ you, Varla. They threw you into the Lake Rumare as a _newborn_. They would have let you die, thrown you to the wolves—it was the Imga prophet who found you. It was I who raised you, who made you into the man you are today. And you would still choose the Ayleid over me? Over the Empire you owe your very life to?”

“I am not choosing any blood at all,” she-as-Varla argues. “But she is a child…”

“Varla,” Belharza says, speaking with false patience, strictly measured tones. “I think of you as a son. Would I have knighted you otherwise, if I did not? I raised you as a _human_ child, a child of Shezarr. So why don’t you raise your sword and let it fulfill its purpose?” He gestures to the child, who sobs quietly on the ground in the fear of her impending death by execution.

“I do think of you as a father, Your Majesty,” Eres-as-Varla says, slowly. “But… this is not right.”

“I care very much for you. You _must_ strike down any Ayleid who would deceive you. Don’t you see what she has done to you, even now? Even as a child? Can’t you see how dangerous they can be? Please, understand—I would not ask this of you if we had any other choice.”

He is lying. Eres knows he is lying. He is trying to get into Varla’s head, to twist him, to manipulate him, to control him. Just as he had always controlled him. Varla had been his father’s puppet, perhaps Molag Bal’s even, through Belharza.

But Eres will not let him fall to that. Not this time.

“I have made my choice.” She steps in front of the young child. She does not raise her sword, but she does not have to. Belharza knows. He understands. “Spare this girl’s life. She is but one girl.”

Belharza is silent for a long moment. Nearby, the soldiers watch them, tense.

“I see,” Belharza says tightly. “I…understand.” His jaw works, and his eyes harden. “Very well. You and I are through from this day forth. You are no longer any son of mine—but I will give you one chance. Take that filthy girl and go wherever you think you might find happiness.”

Belharza crosses his arms over his chest, almost petulantly, his nose wrinkling with distaste.

“The last ship to Alinor will sail in three days, I am told,” he says begrudgingly. “You should board it.”

Varla nods. Eres nods with him. The two of them—both Eres and Varla and both of them combined, maybe, lean down to offer an armored gauntlet to the young girl. She grabs Varla’s large hand.

When Eres looks up, she is on a dock. There is a boat just to the left of her. She sees Rithos, leaning against the wall. The little girl is at her heels.

And there is a song, playing on the wind. A familiar song. She knows this song.

It is the song of the bard. The song of the bard that is Molag Bal and is not Molag Bal, at the same time.

She turns to face him as he appears, just a step behind her, leaning against the railing of the dock’s bridge, lute in hand.

“What do you want?” She asks of him.

He stops playing. He looks at her, queerly, with his head cocked to one side. He eyes her searchingly. “Are you Varla?” He asks.

She’s not sure if he means this in the way of him not recognizing who Varla is, or if he asks because he can see her, _within_ Varla, and knows that she is not him. She does not answer, all the same. She cannot. Molag Bal might know. Would know. Cannot know. Not yet. Not until the end.

“Tell me, why did you give up your position as a knight?” She doesn’t answer him. His mouth twists. He frowns.

“Since you’re departing for a long journey, how would you like me to see you off with a song? What do you say about the song of Polydor and Eloisa?”

Eres does not know this tale. She is sure it is a trick, somehow, anyways. She refuses him.

“Please don’t,” says Varla. Not herself. Not her as Varla, but _Varla._ “Your songs are so depressing.”

“Ah,” the bard says, and he nods. Something odd flashes across his face, but he buries it just as quickly. “That’s a pity. Another time, then, perhaps. I wish you a good journey.”

There is a tug at her hand. She looks down, and there is a girl there. She is so small. So small, and very pale, and her hair is very bright white and her skin is healthy and clean and her eyes are bright and looking up at him with innocence still in them. Innocence, and curiosity. She looks up at him—at her? At Varla—with wonder.

“Where are we going?” She asks him. Her. Varla. Not her. “Is it nice there?”

“I’ve heard it is,” she says. Varla says. Both of them. Somehow. Possibly?

She tugs the girl along. The bard is gone. Rithos looks up at her.

“I wish you good health, Varla,” says Rithos when they approach him. “Leave the worries of the Empire to us. Have a good life in Alinor.”

She nods at him. Varla nods at him. Together—she, and Varla, and the girl whose name she knows is Enola and is not even sure how she knows that but she knows it—they turn, and walk up the little plank to climb onto the deck of the ship that will take them to Alinor. They will leave the Empire behind.

Varla will not kill an innocent child. He will not hunt elves, and then get bored with hunting elves and begin hunting humans. His blood will not drive him mad. He will not end up in Coldharbour. He will not be Corrupted. Molag Bal has lost him, now, too.

Eres opens her eyes. She is in the fort. Varla’s body is just in front of her knees. The skin beneath her hand feels supple, fleshy. She pulls her hand away. He is an elf, under there. The olive tone of his skin, his high cheekbones, the long sweep of his nose—all of it gives him away. He could not have hidden his elven blood if he tried.

He had gotten so wrapped up in the self-hate that Belharza had made of him that he had spent his entire life trying to make up for it. And then, when that was not enough, he had gone mad. The bard had facilitated it only just as much as Belharza had. They had both been his downfall. And the child’s death had been the turning point, the last step before he fell off the razor’s edge he had lived on.

Now, she has tilted the balance in the other direction. Molag Bal has lost another pillar. He has lost another soul. Varla’s soul is free now—in mind, in spirit, if not in body. He is at peace. He has been shown the way to peace. She has shown it. He will be redeemed.

She closes a hand around the Eye at her neck. _Madness sets with the moons_ , the whispers tell her, the Eye tells her. There is the mansion, and the Cat-King, and the madness. She will find him, and free him, and then she will drop the last barrier and find Malada, because she must. Because she must find Malada to find Molag Bal, and she is not done yet.

She is not done yet. Molag Bal has lost many of his strongest souls, but it will not be the last thing that she makes him lose.

Molag Bal will lose everything.

FORT DAWNGUARD  
_Guest Chamber, West Side_

_“What news have you?”_

It is the same question Auria has asked every night since she had arrived at Fellburg. When Auria had reported how quickly she had managed to insert herself into the general house staff at Fellburg Keep, Mirabelle must admit she had been a bit dismayed at their utter lack of security. She must speak to Eres about that, she thinks—the family she has left behind in Fellburg to run her estate are not nearly suspicious enough for her liking, much as it had made Auria’s job easier.

Tonight, however, is the first time that Mirabelle has news that Auria will want to hear. Though she may only want to hear part of it.

“They have found Eres,” she says, and Auria gasps. There is something muffled on the other end, something like a hand slapping into a pillow in exultation. Mirabelle smirks despite herself—she knows that Auria must be beside herself, trying to contain her reaction in the dead of the night. She is meant to be a maid, not a witch. “That is the good news.”

Auria sobers on the other end. _“And the bad news?”_ She asks, primly, rather much more controlled than she had been just moments ago.

“I am afraid the mantling has had an effect on her. She has not spoken to Isran or Inigo since they discovered her in the charnel. She seemed to recognize Serana’s voice, at least—it was thanks to Serana they managed to relax her long enough for Eres to get some kind of rest. But Isran reported that Eres slept for only a few hours before she was moving again.”

_“And then?”_

“She seems to be going after Molag Bal’s generals, or otherwise important souls within Coldharbour. She went after a former healer, a miracle worker by all respects. Then the Saint Dulsa, who was the wife of the prophet Marukh the Imga—you may not be familiar. Following Marukh’s visions, he murdered his own wife and child in a sacrificial ritual. I imagine this may be the moment Eres went back to correct.”

_“Ah—You mean the Dragon Breaks she is creating within Coldharbour?”_

“Yes,” Mirabelle nods. “I have reason to suspect that Eres is choosing to redeem these souls, in a manner, by returning to the point in time where they were in a precarious situation that, in one way or another, led to their downfall into Corruption. Marukh’s sacrifice was a pivotal moment in his own downfall. It makes the most sense.”

_“So, Eres is manufacturing these breaks in the timeline to correct these past wrongs—so that they are never Corrupted to begin with. How can you be sure that is what she is doing?”_

“Do you have any other explanation for her delaying the last barrier? We believe these generals—or these souls—serve as pillars of power for Molag Bal, as they likely had a hand in collecting many of the souls who remain there today. By _un_ -corrupting them, Eres steals some of his power away from him, right under his nose. If she means to confront him, weakening him before she drops the last barrier is the logical thing to do. It also may be what _Shezarr_ wants her to do.”

 _“She is acting more as Shezarr now than as herself, is she not_?”

“So it seems,” Mirabelle murmurs. “Isran reports that she is not at all like herself. That she is more like an empty vessel, being driven by another person. Her recognition of Serana’s voice seemed to be the most _Eres_ thing about her. Everything else, however…”

Auria lets out a frustrated sigh, on the other end of the gem Mirabelle has fashioned to communicate with her. Mirabelle wears it as a segmented ring that can be turned on her finger to activate its communicative properties. Auria, she knows, wears it as a locket around her neck. She can hear every noise Auria makes with startling clarity, at times.

_“But, when she has completed these missions that Shezarr is asking of her, she will return, will she not?”_

“So we hope.”

_“Is there doubt in this?”_

“There is some,” Mirabelle admits. “Mortals who experience Dragon Breaks firsthand don’t often leave the experience with their sanity intact. Eres has mantled a god, and she has been throwing herself into Dragon Break after Dragon Break, over and over, in her quest to confront Molag Bal. I imagine, if Greymarch was her only goal, she would not have gone so far to weaken him. There is more at stake here, and Eres has now, by our estimate, experienced at least three Breaks firsthand. We must examine the possibility that her mind may not be whole when she returns.”

A long pause. Auria takes a long breath.

 _“If that is the case,”_ she says slowly, _“then you will bring her to me. You will bring her to me, besides,”_ she says quickly, as if Mirabelle would have done otherwise _, “but I will not have some stranger poking around in her head. If anyone can heal her mind, it will be me.”_

Mirabelle believes in that. She does. Auria is a talented mage, and an even more talented healer. She has seen that woman work wonders, before, and that had been twenty years ago. Assuming she had not let her skill fade over time—which Mirabelle did not think she had—then there would be no one better equipped for such a thing than Auria.

“I will do as I have promised,” Mirabelle assures her. “I will bring her to you, when we have retrieved her. You should make what preparations you can now, while you have time. I do not expect it to be much longer.”

_“You think that she will return soon?”_

“I think that she is almost done, with whatever it is she is doing. Isran said she kept muttering the same phrases to herself, over and over. There were two of them at first—‘Madness sets with the moons’, and ‘blood is thicker than water’. After they saw the man in the fort and she kneeled over him, she kept repeating only the first one. I believe each of these phrases may relate directly to the souls she is chasing within Coldharbour. If I am right, she only has one left.”

_“And after that, then she will move to drop the final barrier.”_

“That is what I expect, yes.” Mirabelle can hear Auria breathe on the other side, quick and shallow. “She has Isran and Inigo with her. She will be fine.”

 _“I must believe that,”_ Auria murmurs softly. _“You must keep me apprised of any developments, Mira. I must know everything that happens.”_

“You know that I will. Sleep, and prepare yourself to receive her at Fellburg. I expect we are approaching the end.”

 _“I will do so.”_ Auria says. _“Goodnight, Mira. And thank you—you have always been my most trusted friend.”_

Mirabelle almost snorts at that. Trusted. And yet, Auria had not told her where she’d been the past twenty years. How very well trusted, indeed.

“And I you,” is what she says aloud, despite this. She twists her ring, closing the connection at last, and sighs. She must get some sleep herself.

She had overestimated, a little bit. She had told Auria it might be a few days yet, but there is a deep worry in her that tomorrow will be a long day—with only one soul left to redeem, tomorrow may be the day that everything comes to a head. They must be prepared for anything.

Including, it seems, a knock at her door.

The timing is too perfect to be coincidence. Mirabelle wipes her face clean of expression, and goes to open the bedroom door.

She is not in the least bit surprised to see Valerica standing on the other side. Serana would not have left the vault chamber. Valerica would, and though Mirabelle may not have seen this woman in action, she knows that she is a powerful master of magic in her own right. If there might have been anyone in this godforsaken fort who could have snuck up on Mirabelle, it was Valerica.

Valerica looks at her, her eyes cold and calculating. Being at the other end of that stare is the not the most pleasant experience Mirabelle has ever had, but she meets it resolutely.

“Explain yourself.” Valerica demands, with no preamble whatsoever.

She does not have to say _what_ she wants Mirabelle to explain. Both of them already know. It would be almost an insult to even specify it.

Mirabelle, however, does not cower under her glare. She holds herself tall. She has nothing to apologize for.

“Someone I know has a vested interest in Eres’ well-being,” she says plainly. She does not parse her words, nor go over the top to absolve herself of guilt. She has none to speak of. “I was merely updating her on the situation.”

“Someone you know.” Valerica’s eyes narrow. “And do _we_ know who this someone is? Can we trust them? Just who are you slinking about in the night to speak to? To tell them of all we have allowed you to see?”

Mirabelle regards her coolly.

“Of all people, _you_ ,” Mirabelle says, raising her brows meaningfully, “should understand.”

Valerica watches her for a moment more, her brow furrowing. That confusion lasts only a few seconds. In just a blink of a moment, Mirabelle can see the comprehension dawn in her eyes.

 _There you go_ , Mirabelle thinks, watching as the suspicion on Valerica’s face fades, replaced with a sort of cautious consideration. _Now you understand._

“Tell no one,” Mirabelle warns her. “She is at Fellburg. She will be there when we arrive with Eres—but in Eres’ current state, I don’t believe it wise for us to add this to her worries, as well.”

Valerica, slowly, nods her head. The look she gives Mirabelle is measured, but almost reluctantly respectful. “I see,” she says shortly. “I will choose to take you at your word in this, Mirabelle. You have, thus far, proven trustworthy.”

“I do try.” Mirabelle says, and smirks when Valerica glares at her. “She is protective, just as you are. There are things that I may never understand, but you will. If it were Serana in Eres’ place—would you not have done the same as she?”

At that, Valerica scoffs. “You underestimate me.” She turns, and she is halfway down the long, dark corridor before Mirabelle can respond.

Mirabelle is not as surprised as she should have been, perhaps. Because Valerica would have run headfirst into Coldharbour herself, if it had been Serana—Valerica had as much as said so. Somehow, that is the least surprising thing Mirabelle has learned all day.

Perhaps she should be thankful that Auria is a bit more…level-headed. But, perhaps only in comparison to the Volkihar.


	11. Parry

ACT V  
CHAPTER XI  
PARRY

COLDHARBOUR  
_Malatar Mansion_

Eres leads them to a mansion, somewhere near the center of the city. Isran and Inigo follow behind her dutifully—they are along for the ride, no matter where she might take them.

The mansion is fitted with traps, because of course it would be, and an old Khajiit dressed in the finely embroidered clothes of a noble who locks them in rooms while sending his creations—hulking beasts made of animated bones—against them. Between Dawnbreaker and Isran’s hammer, they make quick work of those beasts, and they chase that man to the very back of that mansion.

They find the Khajiit man there, curled up by his bed and shivering. He cowers when they enter, heaving dry sobs when he sees them.

“I have killed him over and over again... I cut off his limbs, I cut out his heart, and still he returns as if nothing has happened…”

Isran knows he is speaking of The Bard, which Isran now can only assume is some kind of agent of Molag Bal—whenever the Cat had accused _her_ of being the Bard, as they had chased him into the depths of his home, she had had the briefest flash of offense upon her face, of indignity. Eres, in her current state, only reacted in such a way to things having to do with the very god who had dragged her here to begin with.

The Cat seems to believe Eres is him, or a facet of him. When they had happened upon him the first time he had spoken to Eres as if he knew her, begged her to stop telling such depressing stories… He had as much as called her that nameless bard to her face, and she had been incensed—for just a moment.

For just a brief moment, Eres had almost seemed like herself.

Now that cat cowers by his bed, his bed upon which a skeleton rests, a skeleton that is wearing a dress and a crown and is surrounded by a bed of wilted flowers. Isran does not want to wonder how long this corpse had been there. Had it ever been buried, or had this man simply been so mad that he had allowed her to rot in his own bed?

“What should I do?” The cat cries. “Should I kill him again and hope this is the last time? Answer me…” He reaches up, taking the skeletal hand in his own. “My beloved Hasaama…”

Eres kills him.

It is a mercy.

This is the cat Eres had spoken of. The cat, the mansion, the madness. Separately, the words meant nothing. Together, they paint a picture. The very same picture that lies before them now.

As she had in St. Dulsa’s Charnel, and presumably with Mary before that, Eres kneels beside the cat’s body, and she places her hand gently upon his head, and she falls into that strange trance just as she had before.

Another Break. Isran pulls Inigo away, away from Eres and the distortion she creates, just in case. They wait. As they have waited before. As they will always wait, until she is done. Until the god releases her to them once more.

COLDHARBOUR  
_Malatar Mansion_

She is not Eres.

She is Hasaama, the wife of the Cat-King Dro’Zel, and her husband is in a terrible mood. He is in a terrible mood because the Bard had told him a story, and he had not liked it. Her husband has always had a bit of a temper. That is alright. She will calm him. She has always calmed him. She has always—

No, she is not Hasaama. She is Eres, _in Hasaama_ , but she is not Hasaama. The Cat-King Dro’Zel is not her husband, but he is Hasaama’s husband, and right now she is in Hasaama’s memory, not Dro’Zel’s, and the King sits upon the bed and he rants about the bard and his stupid tale and how much he disliked him and how it had put him in a foul mood.

“Hasaama… That blasted bard’s tale about Polydor and Eloisa put me into a rotten state. Why did he have to be so depressing?”

It is not the first time Eres has heard of this particular tale. She does not know the tale of Polydor and Eloisa. _She_ doesn’t, not Eres, she as Eres does not know it but Hasaama does. She thinks. Maybe. She’s not sure anymore. Something about an elf. An elf and a human and a forbidden love and death. Lots of death. There is always death, in these tales. Tragedy. Always tragedy. She is tired of tragedy. _She_ is, Eres is, but Hasaama does not mind. Hasaama likes the story. She thinks it is romantic.

Eres does not.

“Isn’t that the truth of the tale, my dear?” Hasaama asks him. Or _she_ asks him? Maybe? Is it her or Hasaama who speaks? She is not sure anymore. Perhaps it is both of them.

“It doesn’t matter what the truth is,” Dro’Zel snaps at her, eyes flashing. “He did a _rotten job_ of telling a _rotten tale_.” It wasn’t that rotten, Hasaama argues internally. And she thinks the Bard was a good story teller. But her husband disagrees. Dro’Zel disagrees. Dro’Zel has never liked that bard.

Dro’Zel stands, suddenly, his expression hard with determination. “I’ll teach him to tell that tale again,” he growls. “That bard—where did he say he was from again?”

 _Gildenvale_ , Hasaama knows, in her mind. Eres knows, in Hasaama’s mind.

But if she tells him where the bard is from, what will that mean?

 _Madness sets with the moons._ What does that mean, this time? Sometimes she can figure out. This time she is not sure. When the moons set, that is daybreak, is it not? Does that mean that Dro’Zel will not be angry once he has slept and the sun has risen? But what does that mean for his Corruption?

What had he done, this night, in this time, that had led him to his downfall?

Eres does not know. Hasaama does not know, either, but Hasaama wants to tell him that the bard is from Gildenvale, and somehow Eres knows that she must not.

If she distracts him, Dro’Zel will sleep, and the moment will pass. But if she tells him, then—she does not know what will happen, but it will be nothing good. Perhaps he will turn to Molag Bal in his thirst to teach the bard a lesson.

Which, because the bard is Molag Bal, or the bard is _part_ of Molag Bal—would that not be just what he wanted?

 _Madness sets with the moons_.

Dro’Zel should go to bed. She should let him come to bed. Hasaama should. Not Eres, but Hasaama.

“People like him have no home.” People like Molag Bal do not deserve it, anyways. She is not lying. Hasaama is not lying, either. She is just—not telling the whole truth. She knows—Hasaama knows—where the bard is from. But Gildenvale has done nothing against Dro’Zel. To tell him now would only give him a target for his ire. They do not deserve it.

Dro’Zel hesitates. His face twsists. Slowly, he sits back upon the bed once more with a long sigh.

“Yes...” He murmurs, closing his eyes. His shoulders sag. The anger drains from him. “You’re right. A good night’s rest and even the worst story loses its horror.”

She is still waiting for the horror to be gone, now. She still remembers it. Part of her does, anyways. But maybe some day. Maybe someday, she will sleep, and she will forget the horror, too.

“That would be best,” Hasaama says, and Dro’Zel smiles wanly up at her.

When she blinks, she is looking at Dro’Zel’s body. He had not been disfigured as the others. His Corruption is not as plain as the others, but she feels him all the same. She feels the peace within him just as well as she had felt the others.

Now there is the barrier. They will go to the barrier, next. The last on the outside. She must drop that one first. Then she will go to Malada, and she will fix this for good.

It won’t be long now. Eres knows this.

Not long at all.

She is at the barrier. She doesn’t remember how she got there. The two followers are with her, still, hovering by her shoulder. They make the going easier, when there is battle. They helped her kill the guardian of this tower. But this one does not have a memory. Not like Pelinal, or Morihaus. This one is just a barrier.

Eres turns. She must find Malada, now. But Malada is on the inside, and they must enter the city. They go there, together. All of them. Her, and the two who follow her everywhere. She knows them, from somewhere. From something. From some time. She’s not sure where. It’s hard to think of anything but the memories swirling in her head.

But she sees Pepe when they reach the inside of the city. He is standing outside of a courthouse. He is waiting for her, as he is always waiting for her. He will guide her.

She goes to him.

He sees her. “Ah,” he says to her. “This place is full of memories. I can see the images of days past in my mind. Oh…” He sounds upset. “Everything is lost, now. Where did I go wrong?”

She is not sure if she asks her, or if he really wants to know. She says nothing.

“Was it when I burned Mary?” He should know. She has shown him the way. He has made many mistakes. Mary was only one of them. “Or when I killed that Sload?” That had started the plague. That was another of his mistakes. That one, Eres had not been able to fix. But Pepe had told her about it. It was his fault.

“Or when I met Marukh, in the jungles of Colovia?”

Yes, that had been another mistake. He had witnessed Marukh sacrificing his wife and unborn child to the Stone, in an attempt to fill it as he could have never filled it. He had been an accomplice. But Eres had fixed that. She-as-Dulsa had killed Marukh before he killed her, and so it was Dulsa who handed Pepe the Stone and told him to hide it, rather than Marukh bringing it back to the Empire and setting all of the events in motion.

Perhaps, if Pepe had hidden it, if Dulsa had survived, none of this would have happened to begin with. But it had. Eres can show them the way home. She can show them the way out.

There is the floating temple, there, not far from where she stands. She looks at it, and Pepe looks, too.

“That is Malada,” he says, though she knows that. She’s not sure how she knows it, but she does. “The High Fane of the Ayleid. Fanatics brought it here. Supposedly so they could dance here, to erase the Eight Divines from Mundus.”

“Fanatics?” She asks him. She needs him to tell her. Information. She needs him to speak, as he always speaks. He always tells her. He is her guide.

“They called themselves the Marukhati Selectives—followers of the Imga prophet Marukh.” She knows Marukh. Any who follow him must have been insane. “They hate all Elves, everything connected to Anui-El, really. You may be a fool,” Pepe says, “but they are much greater fools. They hate everything in existence, just like Molag Bal.”

“I must get into Malada.”

“There is a monastery of Marukh’s followers to the South.” South. She looks. She sees buildings, but she is not sure which is the monastery. She needs to get to the temple. She knows she must. She must bring Greymarch. “There is a portal underground to Malada. Marukh’s followers have gone mad long ago—they will not let you use the portal so easily.”

She knows that. They are insane. They followed Marukh, so they must be.

That is fine. She will find a way.

But first, there is something else she must handle.

“So, the monastery, then?” Says one of the Followers, the tall one with the dark skin. He turns like he means to go there on his own.

He must not. He will die there if she is not with him. That she knows.

They cannot go there just yet. There is something pulling her. There is something in the Courts. Something she must see. Something she must free. She knows this, just as well as she knows Malada is where she must go next.

She must go to the Courts now, because everything will end after Malada. She is sure of that. There is not much time left, here. She does not have much time. None of them do.

COLDHARBOUR  
_Inquisition Courts – Antechamber_

There is a dragon. There is a dragon in the antechamber of the courts, chained to the ground, trapped inside the building, and Isran has no idea how Eres knew it would be there, but she had known.

He had thought, after they had met Pepe and seen the floating temple in the distance, that they would immediately go to Malada. They had dropped the last barrier, and still the barrier around the very center of the city, where the Tower rose high into the sky, remained up. Greymarch did not start, though Isran did hear another ominous cracking in the distance. He had figured, given this, that there must be at least one more barrier. He would have bet money that last barrier would be within Malada itself, and that Eres would immediately go to it.

Instead, she had turned away from it, and led them deep into the courts—or what might have once been the courts, sometime ago. The first room had been empty, devoid even of guards or anyone who might have stopped them.

Then Eres had led them into the second room, and there is a dragon.

A very large dragon, crumpled in the center of a barred, circular cell, chained to the ground and trapped within. When Isran looks up, he can see that there does seem to be some sort of skylight, however it looks far too small to have fit a dragon within it. He cannot see how these people must have lured and trapped it inside this building—or why.

But Eres, somehow, had sensed that it was here. And she had refused to go to Malada until she had found him.

Just as Eres only has eyes for that dragon, the dragon only has eyes for her.

“You…mortal child…” The dragon rasps, and his voice does not come from his mouth, somehow, but somewhere deep within his throat. “You are not like the others here.”

The dragon’s eyes flicker briefly to Isran and Inigo, but they do not linger. He does not care any more for their presence than Eres seems to.

“What is it you desire from me, child?” He asks her.

“Why did they trap you here?” For the first time, Eres looks at them—or rather, she looks at Inigo, almost expectantly, and she gestures towards the barred door. Inigo moves at once, eager, dropping to his knees to pull out his lockpicks. In seconds, he has popped the lock, and the door swings lazily open before them.

Isran steps back.

Eres steps forward. She enters that cell without fear, without hesitation, and even goes so far as to press her hand against the white-and-blue scales upon the dragon’s long snout.

Incredibly, the dragon allows it—he even bows his head to allow her to more easily reach him, his jaw touching upon the floor, holding himself low so that she can lay her hand upon him. He looks—in a way, domesticated, under her touch. Like he has accepted her hold over him, her power. Like he has even yearned for it, in a way.

“What were they doing to you here?” Eres asks. Her hand brushes gently against the scales, there. Isran does not go to her side, not trusting the dragon near as much as she does—but he shifts so that he can see her expression. It is not just the flicker of emotion he sees on her face, but it is immutable—there is remorse, there. Sympathy. It is _Eres_ there, not Shezarr—but Eres. At least part of her, somehow, has clawed to the surface in the presence of this trapped dragon.

Isran settles. If being near this dragon helps bring Eres back to the surface, he will not fight it. They need her to return to them.

“They were trying to take my blood,” the dragon tells her calmly. “But, for better or worse, that curse made it impossible.”

“Curse?”

“A blood curse… took my wings.” Isran looks. His wings seem perfectly present to him. But perhaps, the curse had merely made it so that he could not fly. “It was… It was a very long fall. I remember nothing since falling into the black sea. The last thing I saw… The Owl… The horrible grin of the Owl…”

Eres frowns. “Jhunal,” she says, and Isran’s brow furrows. Jhunal the Owl? Hadn’t that been the mage who had become Julianos? He remembers the story only vaguely from his time as a Vigilant, but Eres speaks of him as though she knows him. “He tried to capture you. He wanted your soul.”

“Ahh…” the dragon says. He lifts his head a bit to look at her. “You have met him…”

“He has a library here.” That is a surprise to Isran. He had not known. “He told me of how he tried to capture the soul of a dragon, but they were petrified when he tried.” Her other hand rises to join the first upon his scales. “It didn’t work on you.”

“It did not…” The dragon confirms.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“The ceiling… There is a lever. Could you open the roof for me? I would like to experience the winds of Kyne once more… if only from a distance.”

Isran moves to search the room without Eres asking him to. The lever is nearly on the other side of the room, but he reaches it, and pulls it to the opposite side. There is a loud clanking noise, and he watches as light fills the room beneath as the skylight widens, shifting, the glass-and-metal of the skylight breaking apart to pull upward, opening the ceiling above to match the size of the room.

 _Ah,_ he realizes. _This is how they trapped him here._

“Thank you,” The dragon rumbles, when Isran returns. “I feel much better, now.”

“The other dragons that were with you, were they the ones Jhunal cursed?”

“Yes,” the dragon answers. “We all served Kyne, but they are all gone now. They could not bear the pain of the blood curse. They turned to Stone, after a time. I imagine I may, too, eventually. When I can bear this pain no more.”

Eres’ frown deepens, but she asks, “You served Kyne?”

“Yes,” says the dragon. “We abandoned Aldiun, and chose to live with Kyne and the mortals. It was our mission to protect Kyne’s garden, but we failed…”

“Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

Inigo goes without her asking, moving cautiously towards the dragon’s limbs to see if he can pick the locks upon the shackles. The dragon allows his proximity, but Inigo does not succeed.

“Kyne’s garden… I must not forget it. White flowers bloom there.” Isran straightens. White flowers. Kyne’s Peace. The same flowers he had seen when they had been following Eres’ trail. The ones she had left at Mary’s statue, and on Mary, and the deceased Sir Gregory. “How I miss their fragrance… But a flower like this could never bloom in this wasteland. It is impossible…”

Impossible, it is not. Not when it comes to Eres. Eres pulls one of those flowers from her pouch. It is not as fresh as the others had been. It is also the very last that she has.

“A woman named Martha was searching for her family,” Eres says softly. “At her grave, I saw the memory of her husband following her passing. Molag Bal had deceived him—made him believe that filling the Stone would bring her back. It could not—but I could bring Martha peace.” Eres offers the flower to the dragon. “These flowers are what remained of her, when I showed her to their graves. She found her peace. Now, perhaps, you can find yours.”

“I never imagined…” The dragon breathes, and he sniffs delicately at the flower held before him. “It reminds me of Kyne’s garden. I remember crossing the vastness of the sky with my friends. Thank you, mortal child. Kyne yet lives. This is good. My friends will take comfort in this.”

“I have something else for you.” Isran looks at her, his brow furrowing. From that very same pouch, Eres pulls a pure, white feather.

“Pelinal also sought the peace of Kyne,” Eres tells the dragon. “He left this behind, when I showed him the way.”

“Kyne’s feather… And it is still pure, even in this wasteland. You do not know what you have given me. You do not know the gift you have brought to me.”

“I knew I must come.” Eres says simply, like it was merely fate that they had met.

The dragon takes what sounds almost like a shuddering breath, and closes his eyes.

“I do not know how to thank you,” he murmurs. “There is such beauty in you mortals. I have known this all along. Alduin never understood this. My friends and I may have failed, but in this—this one thing, we were not wrong in our convictions. Kyne yet lives, even here—in the hearts of the _people_.”

The dragon presses his snout to Eres’ stomach, as though in an expression of gratitude.

Eres presses her hands against him—one, with the flower, the other, with the feather. Both remnants of Kyne that somehow, had managed to persist even in Coldharbour. Evidence that purity could exist even in a place like this.

“In your heart also, Kahkaankrein.”

The dragon rumbles a sigh against her. “My name…” he breathes. Isran feels wind—wind, _here_ , buffeting against him, and an indescribable surge of energy. “After all this time… I had almost forgotten my name…”

His body begins to fade, distinegrating into wisps of light and smoke-like energy, energy that twists and turns and spins within the room and is _sucked_ , sucked into Eres, absorbed into her—his very soul, his essence, everything that had once been _Kahkaankrein_ —pulled into Eres, entering her, joining with her.

When he is gone, both the feather and the flower are nothing but ash in Eres’ hands, the fine grains of their essence drifting to the ground in front of her.

Isran takes a step forward. He presses a hand to Eres’ shoulder. “You brought him peace,” he says to her, and he is unsure of why he feels the need to comfort her, but he does. “I’m sure he’s found it, now.”

“He has.” Eres sounds sure of it. She also sounds—different, somehow.

Eres turns to him. She looks at him. Looks _at him_ , in the eyes. She focuses on him. She _sees_ him.

She sees him.

“I can feel his peace inside me, too,” she says. Then she looks between the both of them, and frowns, her brows pulling together. She looks back at Isran.

“You are both idiots.”

Isran barks out a laugh. Never in his life has he been so glad to be insulted. Eres. That’s _Eres_ , not Shezarr. The dragon—whatever peace he had managed to bring her, he had somehow, someway, brought peace to her mind as well. In some small way.

“But thank you,” Eres says quietly. “For coming for me.”

Inigo is much less reserved than Isran. He lunges for her, wrapping his arms around her in an eager embrace. “Inigo told you he would not let you do this alone.”

“And you?” Eres asks Isran.

Isran scoffs, shaking his head. “As if I could trust this cat to bring you back on his own.” He smirks when Inigo makes an affronted noise at him.

Much as he isn’t a fan of Inigo’s over-eager personality, he must admit the cat is loyal to a fault, and skilled with a bow besides. He was capable, as much as he didn’t act like it.

But there’s something more pressing than that.

“Are you okay, now?” Isran asks her. “Or is this just—a brief respite?”

Eres’ brow creases. “I’m not sure,” she says, and he can tell that she means it. “But I can’t leave yet. We have to go to Malada.”

“That’s where the last barrier is, I’m guessing.” Eres nods. “Then what are we waiting for? We get this barrier down and then we _get out_.”

But Eres’ face falls, and Isran knows he’s not going to like what she says next.

“I can’t leave, Isran. Not yet. There’s still something I have to do here.”

Isran’s jaw works. He knows. He had hoped—but he had known. He’d known it couldn’t be that simple. “You have to confront Molag Bal, don’t you. In that Tower.” Eres nods. “And what about Greymarch?”

“It will begin once the barrier is dropped,” Eres tells them. “It’s the only thing holding them back. But—Laza and the Army of Order, they will be more concerned with those who have been touched by Molag Bal. Their goal is to stamp out corruption wherever it rests—and to set in motion the reset of this world, as they have always done. Molag Bal halted the cycle—they have to set it to rights, now.”

Isran nods. “That’s about the same thing Serana told us about it.”

Something flickers in Eres’ eyes. “She was right,” is all she says. “The good news is that they’ll likely be so preoccupied with chasing down Molag Bal’s minions that they won’t bother with us unless we provoke them.”

“But,” Inigo says hesitantly, “Eres, _you_ have been touched by Molag Bal. Won’t they also come after you?”

“That’s why we’ll have to move quickly.” Eres catches their gaze, one at a time. Her eyes are focused, sharp. Clear. She is _there_ , for the first time in some time.

“We drop the barrier in Malada, and then we will have to run for the Tower. Molag Bal should be at the top of it.”

“And what then?” Isran asks. “What happens when you find him?”

“Then you leave it to me,” Eres says plainly. “I know what I have to do now.” Her eyes harden. “He wanted me to fill that Stone for him. And I will.”

Isran frowns. “What the hell do you mean?”

“The reason he wants that Stone filled is so he can open a portal to Aetherius. He wants to escape the Greymarch by taking over another plane. But, the only thing that can fill the Stone is the soul of an Immortal. Like the soul of a dragon, perhaps,” she says.

“So—what, you’re going to _give_ the Stone one of the dragon souls?”

“I’m not going to give it _my_ soul, Isran.” Eres actually smirks at him.

“I’m going to give it _his_.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> asjkdhfh sorry i keep forgetting how long its been since i posted a chapter


	12. Beat

ACT V  
CHAPTER XII  
BEAT

_“Serana?”_

Emotion cinches around Serana’s throat tight enough to choke. She scrambles for the Horn at the sound of that voice, holds it in her hands, opens her mouth to speak—and finds that she cannot.

 _Eres._ It’s _Eres._ It feels like a lifetime since she’d last heard that voice. There had been a part of her, however deeply she had shoved it down, that had feared she might never hear it again.

“Eres?” She calls, and her voice sounds so much softer, so much weaker than she had meant it to sound. She clears her throat and tries again. “Eres, is that you?”

 _“It’s me.”_ By the Gods, it is. It _is_. She sounds—she sounds just fine. She sounds like herself. _“I’m here.”_

Serana turns her eyes upward, as if she might find the Gods there, looking down at her, waiting for her to thank them. In this moment, she might have done just that. Absently, she sees her mother leave the room, bringing Mirabelle with her. Perhaps somewhere in the back of her mind, she is embarrassed that they had felt it necessary to give her that privacy, but she can only be thankful for it.

“By the blood—Isran told me you weren’t yourself. I was worried you might—“ she swallows. She doesn’t want to even finish that sentence out loud. It feels like saying it out loud might make it true. “How are you?”

 _“Fine, for now.”_ She doesn’t like that qualifier. But at least Eres is being honest with her, she supposes. _“I don’t know how long this will last.”_ That is decidedly even less good to hear. _“Kahkaankrein’s soul must have done something to help stabilize the—“_ Eres pauses. _“I’m not even sure what it is. The whispers, the memories—they’re still there, but they’re not as loud.”_

“Whispers?” Serana asks, though she’s not sure she wants to know the answer.

 _“From the Eye. It’s been guiding me to the memories. The dreams.”_ Okay. So Eres still doesn’t sound quite sane. That’s—not ideal, but she can work with that. She can work with that. It’s still _her_ Eres, she’s just—she’s just a little confused, is all. They can fix that, when she gets back.

 _“I had to find the dreams so I could weaken his hold here.”_ That sounds—sort of similar to what Serana had expected.

“You mean his pillars? The pillars of his power?”

 _“I guess?”_ Eres doesn’t sound sure. _“I don’t know. The Eye spoke to me, it showed me things—things I had to do. It wouldn’t stop until I found them. The memories—they were moments where these people had accepted the Stone. Where they’d accepted Molag Bal. All of them, they swallowed it—just like I did.”_

“Who were these people, Eres? How many of them are left?”

 _“There aren’t any more. I found them all. There were… There were a lot of them. I can’t remember them all anymore. But—there was Pelinal Whitestrake, and Morihaus,”_ Serana snaps her fingers several times, turning toward the door.

After the fifth, her mother cracks the door open, and Serana beckons her near. “Pelinal, mother. Him and Morihaus—there should be books on him somewhere. Find them for me.”

Mirabelle manifests at her mother’s side, and together they go rifling through the notes and tomes and parchments that they have been poring over since day one.

Day one.

It seems like so long ago, now. It hadn’t even been a full week yet, had it?

_“Pelinal—he fought against the Aurorans in the palace, against Umaril. When he killed them all, Bhal came to him—the Bard, not Molag Bal—or… I don’t know. They might be the same person. Or maybe he’s part of Molag Bal. I’m not sure anymore. But Bhal came to him, and he showed him Umaril’s… chamber. He had been using slaves to reproduce the Ayleid’s body art.”_

Serana snaps her fingers again, and Valerica catches her eye to nod quickly. Good—her mother knew what else to look for then. Ayleid body art? That had to be important, somehow.

_“There was a slave left alive down there. It was Mary, the healer—he impregnated her, and Bhal said she had to be killed, because she had the blood of Ada within her… It’s a powerful bloodline, but one that curses any who carry it with madness. Like Varla. Pelinal killed her—or he would have killed her. But I changed it. He let Mary go. He found peace, after, because he lost his will for murdering as he once had. Then there was Mary’s memory, with the Inquisitor—Pepe let her go, when I went back to change it. Instead of letting her die. And Dulsa killed Marukh, instead of dying to be his sacrifice to Molag Bal…”_

“So these memories—they were turning points for these people. Moments where they would have been corrupted?”

 _“Moments where they would have accepted the Stone, and filled it with souls for him,”_ Eres tells her. _“By changing it, the souls are forfeit. They find their own peace without him, and his power weakens in the aftermath.”_

Her mother comes with several books. One, she lays open in front of Serana to a page with a grotesque illustration of an “artwork” by the Ayleid—which was little more than brutality, blood and innards arranged to form a sculpture. Serana’s nose wrinkles with disgust. The Ayleid had been monstrous.

“You’ve dropped the last barrier, haven’t you?”

 _“Not yet,”_ Eres answers. _“We’re going to Malada now. The last barrier will be there.”_

“We’ll start preparing for the ritual to open the portal—“

_“No.”_

Serana freezes, staring at the Horn like it might have the answers.

“No?”

 _“No,”_ Eres repeats. _“Not yet. We have to get to the Tower.”_

“Eres, that’s where—“

 _“I know.”_ Eres sounds determined. Resolute. And there’s something deeper, there. Something barely restrained. Something resentful. Something like deep-seated hatred boiling beneath the surface. _“That’s why I have to go.”_

“Eres—I understand you want to get back at him, but he is _God_ —you can’t fight him! He’ll kill you! He’ll—“ Her mind reels. She feels sick. “Eres, he will destroy you.”

 _“He can’t. He needs me. To fill the Stone.”_ Eres sounds so _confident_ about it. This fucking idiot. She sounds so sure. _“I’m going to fill it for him. But not in the way he wants me to. I’m going to turn his own weapon against him.”_

“Even if you _could_ manage to do that, it’s—it’s _useless_ , you do know that, right? You can’t win against him. He’s a _God_ , and whether or not you’ve mantled a god, you’re still _mortal_. You _do_ know that, right? You can still _die_ in there, Eres. He can still—“ Serana swallows. “He can still take you from me.”

_“He won’t be able to. The Stone will take his soul. You remember, don’t you? In the Soul Cairn, when we fought Durnehviir.”_

“Molag Bal is not some—some ghost dragon.”

Eres sighs. _“He’s not, but listen to me. It won’t kill him. But it will take him time to regain his strength after I get through with him. And even while he tries to build his strength, Greymarch will be there wiping the slate clean. He’ll be effectively crippled, Serana. He won’t be able to come after me. Or you.”_

“This isn’t _about_ me,” Serana argues, but she hears a soft, almost bitter laugh on the other end of the Horn. “Eres?”

 _“It was always about you,”_ Eres murmurs. _“Didn’t you wonder why I came here?”_

Serana doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t want to know, she doesn’t want Eres to say it because she’s _thought_ about it and she knows how selfless Eres is, she _knows_ —

But Eres says it, anyways.

 _“He would have taken you, if I had refused him.”_ Serana’s heart sinks. It sinks through her stomach, through the floor, through the earth, even.

It’s _her fault_.

She’d known it all along.

It’s _her fault_ that Eres in Coldharbour. If it hadn’t been for her—

_“Don’t blame yourself, Serana. I chose this. I knew I would find a way to make him regret it. I knew I would find a way out of here. I’m going to finish this, and I’m going to get back home, and he’ll never bother either of us ever again. I can promise you that.”_

“Eres…” Serana holds her head in her hands. She wants to throw herself into the abyss. It’s _her fucking fault_. “I’m so—“

 _“Don’t apologize to me. You didn’t do this. He did. I’m going to fix this. Don’t start thinking this is your fault.”_ Serana huffs out a bitter laugh of her own, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. How could she not? Eres wouldn’t be in this situation at all if it hadn’t been for her.

 _“I had a choice, you know.”_ Eres tells her quietly. _“I could have let myself die in that mansion. I might have. I thought about it. I would rather have died than give myself to him. But he said—he said if he didn’t take me, he’d take you. And so I came here. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”_

“If it wasn’t for me—“

 _“If it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead.”_ Eres says plainly. _“I’d have burned in that mansion. You’d have never seen me again. So if you want to blame yourself for something, Serana, blame yourself for not letting me give up. Blame yourself for giving me the strength to rise against him, god or not. Blame yourself for—for being someone I cared about more than myself.”_

Serana’s mouth works, but she can’t find the words to say. She has _so_ many words, so many of them, and none of them come to her, in that moment. Why could none of them come to her? She has so much—so much she needs to say to her.

_“I have to go. We’ll be at Malada soon, and the Selectives won’t be too happy to see us. But don’t worry. I’ll be fine. The Eye will lead me, just as it has before. I’ll be back soon. I’ll see you again soon.”_

Serana kind of wishes she _could_ cry, now. Maybe if she could, she wouldn’t feel like her feelings are strangling her, choking her, cutting off her ability to speak. To put words together.

Eres has to make it home. She _has_ to. She has _so much_ she has to tell her. There’s so much.

“I’m—“ Serana swallows. Her hand tightens around the Horn. She tries to ground herself in the moment, to settle. To breathe. “I’m holding you to that, Eres.”

_“I’d expect nothing less. Until we meet again.”_

The Horn goes silent.

Serana drops the Horn on the table. She buries her face in her hands. She feels like she can’t _breathe_ for the strength of the emotion that rises in her. Eres, that fucking _idiot_ —that idiot. She doesn’t even notice her mother’s arms closing around her.

COLDHARBOUR  
_Underground Monastery of the Holy Brothers of Marukh_

“All set?”

Eres meets Isran’s gaze and nods. She tucks the Horn to her belt, and for a moment her hand stills. There is another horn, there. Rusted. Its surface rough and marred, crusted with both blood and dirt. The Horn of Stendarr. She’d—she must have forgotten she’d had it, after… After the Eye, maybe?

It’s all still a little unclear in her mind. When she tries to think too hard, to recall things she had done under the influence of the Eye—or rather, as Isran told it, under the _mantling of Shezarr—_ whatever the hell _that_ meant—it feels like she’s trying to catch smoke. She can reach for it, run her fingers through it, but she can’t hold on to it long enough to see what might be there.

She remembers arriving. She remembers the Sarcophagus. She remembers the Memories themselves—the dreams she had been shown, the—Isran called them Dragon Breaks, but she’s not entirely sure that’s accurate. She couldn’t _change_ what had already happened, not really, but, she could… what? Create a new timeline alongside the first? She doesn’t understand the technicalities of it. That’s all well beyond her, even if she’d been in her _right_ mind.

All she knows is that changing the memories helped those souls to find peace—even if it was only within their own minds. That peace afforded them freedom from Molag Bal’s corruption, and that meant Molag Bal lost his power. That’s all she cares about. That’s all that matters.

She doesn’t remember the in-betweens. She doesn’t remember going from place to place. Doesn’t remember her thought process. She remembers the memories, and then nothingness, and then memories again.

And then Kahkaankrein. She remembers him. She remembers the feeling of his scales under her fingertips. The warmth of his breath against her. She remembers his soul filling her, warming her inside, setting things right side up again—in a moment, it was like someone had shown her she had been trying to read a book upside-down. Kahkaankrein, somehow, had set things upright again, and she could see.

She could see Isran, and Inigo, and—she couldn’t _see_ her, but she could at least _speak_ to Serana.

Isran and Inigo had come all the way to Coldharbour to find her. She’d called them idiots. Because they were, of course, but also because—also because she kind of loves them a bit for it. They’re both idiots. They’re all idiots.

They’re idiots, together, but at least they’re the kind of idiots who can always depend on each other. That’s all anyone could ask for, right? How many people could say their friends would follow them into hell, and _not_ be exaggerating? She wants to be thankful, but she also fears that following her here has trapped them, too.

She doesn’t bother to tell them to leave without her, that she’d find some other way out on her own. She knows they won’t listen. If they’d followed her into Coldharbour, they certainly won’t going to leave her in here alone. That was out of the question.

All she can do is make sure that they make it out.

“To Malada, then.” Isran eyes the corpse on the floor with some distaste. “Do you think we’ll find more of these guardians inside?”

Eres looks back to where the guardian of the portal had fallen. The Monastery itself had not been as overrun with Marukh’s selectives as she had expected, save for this one. He would have been a handful to take on her own, but with Inigo and Isran as back up into a three-on-one fight, the battle had been almost too easy.

“I expect we’ll find more of them inside,” she tells them. “This can’t be all of them.”

Isran does not put away his Warhammer, though he does eye the open portal with some distrust. “You sure this will take us there?”

“Can you think of another reason why he would have been guarding it?” Isran levels her with a look, and Eres shrugs. “I’m as sure as I can be.”

“That isn’t half as reassuring as you seem to think it is,” Isran grouses.

She shrugs again. Telling him that had been a lot easier than saying _‘the Eye told me so’_. Or, at the very least, it made her sound less insane. But she feels it, tugging at her, pushing her ever forward.

“What a _revolting_ sight this Hero of Malada became.”

Eres spins, turning to see the Inquisitor Pepe entering the room behind them. Isran holds his Warhammer at the ready, but Pepe only shuffles forward—to her. How had he even gotten all the way here, all the way into this room, without her hearing his approach?

“Look at him,” Pepe sneers, his head pointing towards the guardian laid waste on the ground. “Look what’s become of him. Look, and remember how this man ended up.”

She frowns, and he looks up at her.

“Some day,” Pepe says darkly, “the same will happen to you. And until someone kills you, you will wander this wasteland endlessly.”

“That’s not going to happen to me.” She tells him plainly. “You might be stuck here, but I won’t be.”

He chuckles at her. “Even if you _do_ manage to find a way out of here—which you _won’t_ ,” he insists. “ _You_ may find a way to leave this place. But this place will _never_ leave you.”

Eres sets her jaw, hides the chill that comes over her. She doesn’t need him to tell her that. She doesn’t need _anyone_ to tell her that. This place is going to haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. That much, she’s sure of—even when she does finally tell Molag Bal to fuck off for good. She might be able to get him to leave her alone, to get him to leave _Serana_ alone—but the memories. The memories would never leave.

Pepe folds his arms behind his back. “What are you waiting for?” She frowns. “Hurry to Malada.”

She’s getting really tired of this old man bossing her around. But she has to go to Malada regardless, whether or not she wants to say no just to spite him.

Sighing, Eres turns, and steps into the portal, closing her eyes before she crosses the threshold. There’s a swoop low in her stomach, a spinning in her head, and she waits where she stands, for just a second, with her eyes closed, waiting for the moment to pass. She steps out of the way just as Isran enters behind her, and then Inigo behind him.

In the distance, Eres hears a low, almost questioning growl.

Marukhati Selectives. They’re still far away, further down the corridor, but they’ve seen them. So much for getting the upper hand.

Instead of Dawnbreaker, Eres reaches back for her bow—only to realize she doesn’t have it. She swears. Dawnbreaker it is, then.

Inigo, blessed cat that he is, uses his own bow to fell the archers that send arrows flying toward them down the halls. Isran pummels any who gets close with his Warhammer, and Eres—Eres fights more cleanly than she has ever fought before, feeling invigorated. She knows, somehow, that it’s not quite _her_ fighting—it feels too much like when Stendarr had blessed her, so long ago. This strength is not entirely her own, but she will use it.

The corridors of Malada wind around each other, doors leading into adjacent buildings that merely wrap back around to another area of the same corridor they’d been in. But eventually, they find their way deeper, and deeper still within the floating temple.

At long last, they open a door, and instead of more winding corridors and levitating passages high enough to make her ill to think of it, it opens into a wide circular room.

At the center of that room, there is a strange, Dwemer-like contraption, surrounded with a barrier, and within that barrier there is a man—or, something that looks _sort_ of like a man, but not quite. He has the body and stature of a man, but the face of an ape, and his eyes are closed and his body is completely still where he stands.

“Marukh the Imga,” Pepe says from behind her. She very nearly swings at him with her sword. As tired as she is of him bossing her around, she’s even more tired of him simply _appearing_ in places unexpectedly. He seemed to be able to just appear anywhere he wished to, without actually having to move there physically, but Eres has never caught him in the act.

“It’s been a long time,” Pepe muses, stepping closer to the barrier around the ape-man. “He hasn’t changed since I met him in that jungle.” His voice turns scornful. “His face still looks just as stupid as it had then.”

The jungle. Right—the memory flashes in her mind. Marukh, in front of the blood-soaked wall, raising his hands to the sky. The Stone. His promise that he would kill St. Dulsa and her unborn child in order to complete the ritual. Her killing him. Pepe’s arrival.

In the original timeline, Dulsa had not survived that. Marukh must have met Pepe there, and together they had brought the Stone back to the Empire. But in the timeline _she_ had created—or, in the memory she had changed or—she doesn’t quite know anymore, but she knows what _she_ had done. She, as Dulsa, had killed Marukh before he’d had the chance. And Pepe had hidden the Stone himself—or claimed to, anyhow.

“This is him?” She asks him. She had never seen his face, in the memory. She hadn’t expected to find him here.

Pepe nods. “The prophet Marukh. He had visions of St. Alessia.” _And me_ , Eres thinks, remembering the books she had read at Bruiant. _He had foreseen this, too._ “He brought the Stone into the city and laid the foundations of the Alessian Order.”

The Eye, for the first time since Eres can remember since she had received it, is silent.

“What do I do with him?” She asks Pepe. She’s—she’s fairly certain she has to kill him. But she wants to be sure.

“Give him peace,” Pepe says. He sighs, then, his voice heavy with exhaustion. “I want it all to end already.”

“The Stone,” Isran says suddenly, “what is it? Both of you keep mentioning it.”

“Just a Stone,” Pepe answers with a shrug. “Nothing else. But everyone kneeled before it. Before its temptation. I still remember it like it was yesterday. But you—“ he looks at Eres, “you held it in your hands, too. And you _swallowed_ it. Even once is more than enough.”

“But—what happened to this Stone, then? Has Molag Bal had it this whole time?”

“It was lost during the War of Righteousness. Even the Daedra left us high and dry. When we lost the Stone, the Empire crumbled soon after.” Not for the first time since Eres has met him, Pepe sounds almost remorseful. “We were not the shepherds of our people. We were their enslavers.”

“Where is it now?” Isran asks. “With Molag Bal?”

Pepe nods. “It’s still at the top of the Tower in the center of the city. Don’t worry. It’s not going to grow legs and run away now, in these circumstances.”

Eres should kill Marukh. She should end it now. But as soon as she kills him, she knows Greymarch will begin. And she still has so many questions. So many things she doesn’t yet understand.

“You and Marukh—what was your relationship with him? What happened when he found the Stone?” This, she hadn’t seen in the memory.

“At that time, I still served the Eight Divines. I heard an Ayleid bard sing a strange song at the crossroads.” The bard. The only constant throughout all of this. Bhal. Molag Bal. The bard. All one and the same. “About the Imga dancing with the apparition of St. Alessia. When I asked him about it, he told me he had seen it himself in the jungles of Colovia.”

Pepe shakes his head. “Normally, I might have laughed off such a story. But I felt it was my duty to see it for myself. Perhaps I felt that way because of the bard himself… So I went.”

“And then?” Eres presses.

“I found it. I saw a dirty monkey, smeared with blood, dancing with the illusion of St. Alessia under the full moon.” That must have been an entirely different point in time than what Eres had seen herself, in Dulsa’s memory. Perhaps after Dulsa had fallen to Marukh.

“Their dance lasted until dawn. When the monkey noticed the morning sun, it stopped dancing, and the illusion of St. Alessia faded into the morning mist. The monkey saw me standing there in shock, raised a brilliant stone and said: ‘Take this Stone to the Tower.’”

Pepe heaves a great, heavy sigh. “And then, you’ve seen what happened. It has all become as you see it now. There is nothing more to say.”

She still doesn’t understand it all. She fears she might never understand it. Perhaps it’s better that she doesn’t.

Eres turns to ape-man, and the barrier he stands behind. Beside her, Inigo draws his bow and fires. He misses entirely.

She almost frowns at him when she hears the arrow pierce metal—and a hissing that grows into a shrill whistle. When she looks, she spots the arrow embedded into one of the metal pipes surrounding the contraption Marukh stands within, and as the pipe bursts, steam pouring from the hole he’d punctured in it, the barrier weakens, and begins to fall.

Eres does not give this Marukh time to remember that he can fight them. She lunges up the stairs on the contraption and buries her sword in his chest to the hilt.

The sound that erupts into the air upon his death is like thunder, if she had been standing in the very cloud it originated. The sound is so deep and so loud that she _feels_ it in her bones, feels the ground beginning to tremble—

“Ahh,” Pepe breathes, and he sounds all too pleased. “It seems the Army of Order broke through the barrier.” He turns his head to her as she frees her sword from Marukh’s chest, and she gets the strangest sense that he is smiling at her.

“At last,” he says, “Greymarch will begin. You truly did well.”

Eres had known Pepe wanted to see the end of this place. It is still somehow surprising to hear him compliment her on bringing the apocalypse that would very likely spell his permanent death.

“What now?” Inigo asks. In the distance, the rumble grows stronger.

“Now?” Pepe asks. “It will all end now. Millennia of pointless waiting—will all end now, thanks to you.”

He looks at Eres again. It’s not just the sense that he’s smiling, even. He seems _proud_.

“I believed at first, that some day Shezarr would come and save us from this suffering. I waited, for _thousands_ of years, and he never came. I opened thousands of sarcophagi, believing in the prophecy, but only poor imitations of the real thing crawled out of them. Where is Shezarr? What is he doing? Oh, I know now—he won’t come! I should have known from the beginning.”

He shakes his head. “But you… You truly did well.”

“I’m sorry,” he says to her. “But I saw no other way. Let me show you the last way out in return.”

She knows it. She knows what he’s going to say, though the Eye has been silent since she had come upon Marukh, here. She knows, even without its guiding whisper.

“Now that Marukh is dead, the central barrier should be weakened, too. Here.” Pepe raises his hand to her, and when she opens her own, he drops a single, non-descript key into her waiting palm. “This key opens the central gate. You must get to the Tower. And hurry—now that the final barrier has dropped, Greymarch will be making their way inside, now, and they have the same goal as you.”

“Goal…?” Isran asks.

“To wipe this plane clean,” Eres tells him. “To reset it.” She turns to Pepe. “What about you?”

“Me?” Pepe shrugs helplessly. “This is the end of my long walk. I will wait here for the end this old man deser—“

Something white bursts upward from the ground, running Pepe right through. His body sags upon the wide spire of the obelisk, his blood painting the stark white of the crystalline obelisk a bright red. More of the obelisks burst from the ground without warning, rippling from Marukh’s prison outward.

“Greymarch!” Eres cannot stop to think about Pepe. She spins on a heel, and bolts out the door with Isran and Inigo hot on her heels.

Greymarch is unstoppable. Greymarch is inevitable. Greymarch cannot be fought against, cannot be defeated.

And now, Greymarch is here, and they’re right in the middle of it.


	13. Riposte

ACT V  
CHAPTER XIII  
RIPOSTE

There is only one good thing about Greymarch, and that is that they hate anything associated with Molag Bal at all. While Eres, herself, is associated with Molag Bal, they do not focus singularly on her alone. When they run past the Order soldiers, the soldiers merely turn to face the next enemy they see, uncaring of which of Molag Bal’s agents they kill first. One way or another, Greymarch will kill everything within the realm—it matters not to them which order they kill them in.

Which means, the three of them are able to barrel past many members of the Army of Order without fighting them directly—Eres sees skirmishes breaking out wherever they go. Even in places where Eres had already eradicated the enemies she had initially encountered, it seemed Molag Bal had launched his own counter attack—more of the red skinned imps in the patchwork armor swarm the streets than ever before, delaying the Greymarch’s inevitable approach to the Tower.

If Eres had hoped they wouldn’t be _inside_ the Tower when she arrived, she is sorely disappointed.

As soon as she crashes through the doors of the Tower’s lower level, she has to go scrambling back, nearly tumbling right into Isran to avoid a lunging Order soldier who spears right through one of the imps not inches from where she’d stood not a second beforehand. More of the imps growl and hiss as they scuttle towards the Order soldier to swarm him, and with Isran helping to right her, the three of them go careening into the Tower, searching for the stairs while trying to avoid the pockets of battling imp and Order soldiers.

They’re not able to avoid them entirely. Though the Order and imps and Dremora are all fighting each other, _they_ are targets, too, identified as unfriendly visitors by _both_ parties, and so any time that they come upon any who are not already distracted, they have to hurry to kill them and hurry on before they can be overrun in the corridors.

Inigo fires his bow and runs at the same time, Isran swings his hammer low and breaks legs and knees ahead of her, sending both imp and crystal warriors toppling to the ground, and Eres’ blade cuts through both like butter, both being _against_ Meridia’s domain in their own way, but there are too many of them, too many of them to be fought.

They find the stairs, and Isran leads the charge, swinging his hammer in a wide arc around him to clear their path while Inigo walks backwards behind Eres, laying cover fire on the poor soldiers and imps who might try to follow them upstairs.

Through hordes and hordes of them they go, Eres’ heart racing a million miles a minute from both adrenaline and fear—fear that they won’t make it, fear that someone will be injured, fear that they will be ambushed and swarmed.

“The end of the hall!” Eres puts on a burst of speed, seeing the reddish, translucent platform in the recession at the end of the hall. She recognizes it, if only because she has seen similar magical apparatus in the Imperial City she had once called home—a lift that will take them higher into the tower without them having to climb the stairs.

They burst through the hall, the rhythm of their trio becoming almost as second nature, and Eres feels the platform shift beneath her feet as soon as she steps upon it. Isran is next, smashing the head right off an Order shoulder as it reaches for them. Inigo buries an arrow into the head of two imps chasing after them and then he must _leap_ onto the raising platform that had not waited for him to be upon it.

The lift rises, inch by torturous inch, and Inigo fires arrows more quickly than Eres had thought possible, killing some and staggering others, but keeping any who saw and might head for them at bay until finally—

Finally, Eres sees nothing but stone walls all around them in a wide circle, leading ever upward.

Her heart pounds against her ribs. She hears Isran’s guttering breath beside her as he steadies himself. Inigo shakes out his hand, cursing when he checks how many arrows he has left. There are not many.

“Inigo hopes there are not many left at the top!” He huffs out, panting from the run. “He does not have many arrows left. And you do not have a bow.”

“How did you notice?” Eres manages, and coughs on what might have been a wheeze if she’d breathed any deeper. Gods. She’s not been taking care of herself in here, has she? When was the last time she slept? Or _ate_? Her limbs feel like they’re made of paper.

Isran looks up. “It looks like this thing goes to the top, at least.”

“We can hope,” Eres mutters. She rolls the shoulder of her sword arm, feeling the strain in it as she does. Gods, she hopes Molag Bal is going to be as weakened as she thinks he might be, or they’re all going to be in trouble. If he hadn’t already been weakened from her stealing the souls right from under his nose, summoning all these underlings to delay Greymarch from reaching him must have taken an enormous amount of whatever power he had remaining. Just how desperate was he? Doesn’t he know she’s coming?

Or, perhaps he thinks that Greymarch will get to her before she can get to _him_. It would be stupid to bet on something so uncertain, but Molag Bal also had thought bringing her _here_ had been a good idea in the first place.

Or, yet another possibility: perhaps he thinks she’s coming to deliver him the soul he wants. Her own. Perhaps he thinks that she’s been fully Corrupted here, now. Could he have sense what she had been doing with the memories? Would he know that she had changed them, or only that his power had begun to decline without warning?

She has no idea what she’s walking into. Let alone what she’s bringing Isran and Inigo into.

The lift stops. Eres feels a pulling, a familiar tugging from within. She looks down the corridor, and she sees him—or, an image of him, anyways.

At the end of that corridor, blessedly empty for the time being—Greymarch must not have climbed this high just yet—there is the spectral form of a spirit that looks remarkably familiar.

Eres beckons Isran and Inigo after her, closer to him. She knows him. She would know Pepe anywhere.

“Soon,” he says to her. “It will all be over soon. A penance of thousands of years will be over today. All of the captured souls will be released.”

“Didn’t we see you die?” Inigo asks.

“The madness cannot be shaken off so easily,” Pepe tuts. “Raising the dead is Molag Bal’s specialty. Even without souls, bodies of the powerful serve him as useful vessels. Even dead Saints serve him well. Or, perhaps I should say that they only serve him precisely because they are dead.”

He turns, walking ahead of her, and Eres has no choice but to follow. She can still hear the sounds of battle in the floors below, metal clanging against metal, the guttural growling voices of the Dremora, the hisses and growls of the imps, and the thunderous cracks of Order soldiers leaping into the fray.

“I hope you’ll share their fate.”

She frowns. The fate of—of who? That her body should serve Molag Bal, too? Just what kind of game is Pepe playing? He’d been helping her against Molag Bal this whole time, so why now was he acting so strangely? 

Pepe stops in front of a set of large double doors, and turns to her. “You must continue to do as you have been doing all along. Destroy it. You can’t do anything else, anyways.”

Eres opens the door.

Within it is a circular room not unlike the one Marukh had been imprisoned in—but in this one, the barrier around the soul resting within that prison is not maintained by Dwemer-like machinery, but Alessian priests who don’t so much as look at them when they enter. At the far end of the room is one final door, and Eres knows—she knows that she must reach it.

The Alessian priests have arranged themselves in a circle around the center of the room, kneeling upon the floor, hands raised to the air where their magic feeds the barrier around the last pillar they have been sworn to protect.

The last, and the most sacred.

Eres recognizes her at once.

Saint Alessia herself.

Eres had seen her in so many memories. Her, facets of her, _followers_ of her—everything had centered around her. Everything. Saint Alessia, who had founded the Empire, who had led the slave uprising against the Ayleid. Alessia.

_She is in the hall of the Great Palace. Morihaus the Bull-Man is sitting at one side of the hallway, head hanging low._

_“I knew she would go to the stars… but it’s still so painful…”_

_Another knight, leaning against the wall. This one does not have a name. It is not one that Eres knows. That Pelinal knows._

_“Paravant will become a star. I will never forget how her eyes burned bright as meteors…”_

_Pelinal. Pelinal Whitestrake, out of his armor, standing in front of her. Standing in front of a bed. A bed, upon which Alessia sits, hands folded demurely in her lap._

_“Periff…”_

_“Welcome back.” Alessia’s voice is soft. Honey-sweet. “I didn’t expect to see you again. …Did you find her?”_

_“Yes, I did. Finally.” Who had he been trying to find? Who was this ‘her’ Alessia had spoken of? “I’m going to her now.”_

_Alessia smiles up at him. “I hope you find the way,” she says to him. To **him** , right? To him… Not her… Not Eres. _

_“I’m… not sure I will,” Pelinal admits._

_“I’m certain you will.” Alessia is so confident. So assuring. She had no doubts. She had never had any doubts._

If she wants to reach that door, Eres knows. Alessia will have to die. Again. By her hand.

Inigo draws his sword beside her. It is almost too brutal, too ruthless, the way the three of them systematically execute the priests who maintain the barrier around Alessia’s body.

Only when the last one falls dead does it finally drop.

Alessia does not move. Not until Eres approaches her, sword drawn, does she move at all—and even then, it is only to raise her head, open her eyes—and look at her.

Simply… look at her.

Alessia doesn’t seem angry. She doesn’t even seem surprised to see her. She looks at Eres, and she smiles, soft and thin around the edges—but it is a smile, nonetheless.

“There you are,” she says, her voice as honey-sweet as Eres remembers it. Alessia’s smile softens. Her eyes are so warm. “I knew they would find you.”

 _Her_? Had the memories—no. No, that was impossible. How could Pelinal have been searching for _her_ , thousands of years ago? How could he have found her? How could—

A sharp pain lances into Eres’ right temple, so sudden and white-hot that it makes her vision double for a moment.

Alessia’s smile wanes. “Go now, quickly. Before the Wolf arrives—“

Eres sees it, moments before it lands.

She sees it, and she can do nothing to stop it.

She sees that white obelisk, no—it is a crystal lance, as stark white as the obelisks the Order soldiers appear in, but it descends from the ceiling, instead, and there is a man—there is a man and he has the lance and he drives that lance down, down, down until he has speared her, until Alessia crumples beneath him and he lands upon the stone floor with her body impaled on the end of it.

She is dead.

Not by Eres’ hands, but—

The crystal soldier raises his head to look at her. He yanks the end of the lance from Alessia’s lifeless body—and raises it towards her. The red line of his visor glows bright where it lands upon her.

The Wolf.

_‘Lay down your staff and you will g row fangs. The waters of the Spring will be tainted, but you will be a wolf. Kyne will be lost, but you will be one step closer to the people you seek.’_

The shepherd.

The shepherd who had become a Wolf, who had sacrificed everything of his being to hunt down Molag Bal—and everything to do with him. Including Eres, who is marked by him.

 _Laza._

Eres readies her own blade. Were she alone—she would have been more worried. She is _still_ worried, of course, but less than she might have been. Laza’s lance is _long_ , and with it against her Dawnbreaker, she would be at a significant disadvantage.

But Laza is alone.

She is not.

And Kyne has not been lost. Kahkaankrein had proved that. Kyne may have been lost to _Laza_ , but she is not lost to _Eres_.

She is the only one of them who is marked by Molag Bal. Laza has eyes for no one else but her, here—he cares not for the lives of Isran and Inigo. She is his target, now that he has killed Alessia. If she can just draw him, draw his fire, focus his attention—then Isran and Inigo can lay into him while he’s not paying them attention, and she will be fine.

They can end Laza here, and then keep going to the top of the tower, and… Molag Bal.

Laza lunges forward without warning, and Eres nearly has to bend over backward to avoid taking his lance to the stomach. She tumbles, using her freehand to levy herself off the ground and back again unsteadily, dancing away from him—she has not cartwheeled since she was a child, and she’s not like to do so again in battle anytime soon, but it had saved her this once.

She draws him out—Laza is large, and though his reach is so long it almost feels like cheating, he is also _slow_ , slower than her, and so she can dodge him, when she is ready for it. She watches him closely, waiting for his next move, watching as Inigo moves to higher ground for a better angle, as Isran shoulders his hammer and slowly advances on Laza from behind.

It feels—in a way, it feels all too familiar. Like she is in Altano’s shoes, facing down that giant mercenary in his plate armor. Only then, she had been on the other side, helping Altano to kill him. Now she is the target, the one who must duck and weave to avoid what would surely have been killing blows, waiting for Isran to find the opening he needs to end him in one hit.

Finally, Laza ducks back out of range to try another approach—right into Isran’s hammer.

Isran swings it low, the crystal at Laza’s knee shattering with the force of the blow and Laza topples to one side, spinning even as he falls to thrust his lance at Isran’s chest, to bring him down with him—

But Isran is faster, stepping out of the path of the lance and raising his hammer high to slam it down just as Laza’s head hits the ground—and the hammer smashes that head even further into it, crushing it into a smattering of crystal shards that rocket and skitter across the stone floor of the room.

For a moment, Isran does not even raise the head of the hammer, holding it in place as though he fears Laza will simply rise from the dead if he moves it.

But Eres hears the battle drawing closer. They have to move, and move _now_.

The in-betweens—the moments where they have a brief respite from the chaotic din below—feel strange. It feels a bit like being trapped in time, like being in a space where the time around them has paused, has shifted into something slower, something sluggish and lazy around them.

It’s a feeling Eres is all too familiar with, the same feeling she has had for—she can’t even remember how long. She feels like it’s been a long time. Had it been weeks, since she came here? Months? She feels almost like she could have aged years in the time she has been in Coldharbour, somehow.

She will have to ask them later. It’s impossible to track how much time she has been here when she can’t _remember_ so much of it. So much of it is just a blank space between the dreams, between the memories she’d encountered. Between the Dragon Breaks. Her head aches when she tries to think of it, and so she does not.

Eres leads them to the final door across the room, leaving behind the bodies of Alessia and Laza. The moment she steps through that door, there is Pepe’s specter again, waiting for her.

Only now he looks at her with his arms folded behind his back, his head hung low in what could have been disappointment—or resignation.

He sighs. “Is it not enough yet?” He asks her. “Must you be the one to do this? Greymarch will end everything, anyway. You’ve done all you needed to do. There’s no need for you to go this far.”

 _This far_? Eres gapes at him, stunned. Just what had he expected her to do? Start Greymarch and then just, just leave? Just like that? Without making sure that Molag Bal couldn’t just follow them?

Maybe—maybe Pepe didn’t know. Maybe Pepe had never known that she had, as Isran had told her, mantled the very God that Pepe had been waiting all this time for. Maybe Pepe believed that he had only manipulated her for his own gain, only driven her to doing what Shezarr _should_ have done—and anything beyond that is just an overachievement by a poor mortal soul who has no chance.

Maybe, in his own way, Pepe means to save her.

But she doesn’t need his savings. “Begone,” she tells him. “You’ve done all you can. Now I have to do what _I_ can.”

Pepe lets out a longer, exasperated sigh. “Won’t you _listen_ to the old man for once?”

For _once?_ She’d been listening to him since she got here. _He’d_ been the one to give her the Eye. She’s done nothing _but_ listen to him.

“I’ll say it again. _Stop_. You’ve done enough. There’s nothing good for you here. Only decay. No mysteries. No miracles. Every effort you could make will end in vain, here. It’s useless. A mortal cannot hope to defeat a God.”

Eres brushes past him. “Good thing I’m not mortal, then.”

She feels it, thrumming in her veins. That divine power. She feels it, tugging at her mind, pulling her conscious away, coaxing her thoughts from the surface to bury them deep. Her eyes sting with a sudden heat, her blood heats beneath her skin. At her waist, the ancient dagger _sings_.

She sheathes Dawnbreaker. She pulls the dagger.

This dagger.

The Bard’s dagger.

She had used it against Lamae, and freed her from Molag Bal’s eternal torment. Ages before now, she’s certain it had been the same dagger that had killed Lamae to begin with, that first night when she had been violated by Molag Bal himself, turned into the first vampire.

The dagger is as connected to Molag Bal as she is, and she can _feel_ him, ahead of her. She can feel him—not at the throne, where she might have expected him to sit, smug in his domination of his realm, but somewhere just behind it.

She walks, dagger in hand, Isran and Inigo at her side, and she steps to that throne herself. She hears his rasping breath. She sees the black shine of an armored foot, just behind it.

The sight of Molag Bal, crumpled behind his throne, leaning against it, panting in his weakness, in his effort to delay Greymarch—is almost laughable. She stands over him, and she admits—she takes a moment purely to savor it. To savor this image of him, crippled by _her_ , by his own efforts, by a combination of the two.

He’d been too arrogant. He’d thought she would fall to the Corruption here, that she would just come to him willingly and he could take that Stone and fill it with _her_ soul, once she had truly lost all sense of the person she had once been.

But the sight of him now, hugging that Red Stone to his chest protectively, raising his pincered head to look up at her, almost makes her laugh.

He’s _pathetic_. And he knows it.

“Stop…” Molag Bal rasps, between quick, shallow breaths. Defending his Tower from Greymarch had drained what little power he had left.

She’d known. She’d suspected that he would be weakened—but even she is surprised by just how far he had fallen in his desperation. His desperation to retain his hold over the realm had led him to this. To this pitiful state. It’s almost embarrassing.

“Please…” He clutches the Stone tight. “Stop…”

She crouches in front of him, dagger in hand. He presses himself against the back of his throne, cowering from it. Coward. This—this fucking _coward_ had done all this? How had he become the god of domination when he was so pathetic without all the power that he’d stolen from those beneath him? How had a man like this ever ascended to godhood? How could a man _this_ pathetic have been so terrible?

How had she ever been afraid of him?

She meets his eyes. She holds the dagger, flipping it to point it at him.

“Did you ever stop?” She asks him, and she doesn’t expect an answer. Doesn’t even want one, really. She knows he did not. Call her petty—she wants to rub it in a little. If there’s any man that deserves having salt poured in his wounds, it’s Molag Bal.

“How many people asked _you_ to stop?” She asks. “How many times did you listen?”

She hears him take a breath, and she doesn’t give him the time to answer. She presses one hand over the surface of the Stone, feeling that surge within her veins, that numbness in her mind, and she thrusts the dagger into his neck, feeling it—feeling it so much more than she had all that time ago, in the sewers beneath Windhelm over Lamae’s dead body.

Then, he hadn’t felt quite solid. Hadn’t felt quite real.

Here, she feels his blood on her fingers. She feels him sag against it, sees the way his arms loosen around the Stone. It falls from his lap, clattering to the ground beside him, rolling—

She spins to snap at both of them, “ _Don’t touch it!”_

Isran steps wisely away from the rolling stone. Eres stands, leaving Molag Bal’s body behind. She grabs the Stone with her own hands. It doesn’t pull at her. Something in it feels… _satisfied_.

But she doesn’t want to take the chance of them being marked, too.

“That can’t be it, right?” Isran asks. “He was practically dead already by the time we got here.”

“He’s not dead,” Eres replies. She turns, spotting the circle upon the floor just meters beyond where she’d killed Molag Bal behind his throne, the divot where the Stone could be placed. 

This. This was that portal he’d been trying so hard to open. The portal to Aetherius. How long had he been trying to fill this Stone to gather enough power to open it?

“He’s just dispersed for now.” She hurries to that divot, hurries to place the Stone within it. She manages just two steps back before she hears the rumble, before the ground begins to shift and move, before a fount of magical energy bursts from the floor beneath and erupts into a wide cone reaching to the sky and yet higher still.

“We have to go now,” she tells them. “I’m not sure how long his soul can be trapped in there. He’ll reform eventually.”

“Wait,” Isran grabs at her arm. “Where does this lead?”

“Aetherius,” she answers automatically. She had known it was Molag Bal’s goal, but even without knowing his ultimate end, she knows it just from the way it _feels_. She knows it as well as she knows the back of her hand, somehow.

“And what’s _in_ Aetherius?”

“A way out.”

Eres turns, and walks through the portal.

It feels very unlike a Wayshrine. Very much unlike an Oblivion gate. The closest thing she has felt to walking into Aetherius had been walking into the Soul Cairn, but even that could not compare—because just as Coldharbour had, the Soul Cairn had felt _wrong_. It had felt uneasy, unsettling around her, the atmosphere heavy upon her skin, weighing her down, pressing against her, suffocating her.

Aetherius feels like walking into home. Like opening the door into a family gathering. Like being welcomed into a warm embrace. It feels _right_. It feels pleasantly cool and cozily warm all at once. It feels like family, like belonging, like—like paradise. It feels like _peace_.

But she sees him, there—or a representation of him.

Molag Bal, petrified in stone not unlike the dragons Jhunal had held captive with the blood curse. He kneels, body run through with a lance, frozen in time.

Eres does not know if it’s actually him, or merely some kind of commemorative statue that details his end. Between the lance and his petrification, it could easily have represented Greymarch’s inevitable win against him. She almost might have assumed that perhaps there were other statues of the other gods here, too, but no. He is the only one she sees.

There is nothing but a set of wide, shallow stairs leading downward to another portal that beckons her, that calls to her like an old friend. She knows, without stepping into it, that that portal will lead her home.

Isran and Inigo move toward it, giving Molag Bal’s statue a wide berth.

Eres does not.

“Eres?” Inigo asks, turning to look at her. “What are you doing? Let us get home.”

But she can’t leave. Not yet.

“There’s…” she steps closer to the statue. She’s. She’s not done, here. “There’s something else I have to do.”

“Eres,” Isran’s voice sounds so serious when she reaches out for him. “What is it?”

“I have to…” Eres’s brow furrows. “I haven’t seen them all.”

“All of _what_?” Isran steps closer. Puts a hand on her shoulder. It feels strangely distant, like watching him touch someone else. Someone who isn’t her.

“The dreams. I have to find all the dreams... It’s not done yet. He’s still here. He’s still… inside here, somewhere… I have to find him.”

She touches it. The world tilts on an axis, and goes dark.


	14. Prise De Fer

ACT V  
CHAPTER XIV  
PRISE DE FER

AETHERIUS  
_End Times_

Molag Bal is here. She knows that he is. She can sense him, somewhere in the distance, beyond the mountains and hill and rock that float upon thin air. She is not—she is not on Nirn, or in Coldharbour, or in anything that is recognizable. She is in the in-between, she is in a mind, in a feeling, in the memory of a memory, in a broken dream, in the confusion of a flashback that is not her own and not his and not anyone’s, but someone’s. Everyone’s. All at once.

She can sense him, just as she can sense the others. The figures of bodies, reaching through the rock and sand, reaching for the sky, reaching for her. She touches them. They collapse. Most of them have nothing to say. They only want to be seen. To be acknowledged.

She touches three before she feels it, the lurching deep within her stomach, the flinging backwards through time and space, the reset.

The memory.

She is in a dungeon. Behind her the cell door is closed. There is a table. She is standing in front of it. He is—they are? Whoever they might be. There is the Inquisitor Pepe, there, across the table, standing mildly, hands clasped behind his back. Alive. Mutated. This is after Colovia. After Marukh. After—after the Stone, maybe? She’s not sure.

“Are you Pepe, the Inquisitor of the Alessian Order?” She speaks, but it is not with her own voice. Nor with her own mind. The words tumble from her lips all the same, unfettered. Unbroken. Uncontrolled. She is an observer, in this room. She is no one, and everyone, all at once.

“I am,” Pepe answers. “Though my appearance has changed considerably.” He who has a squid for a face, he who lies. “So what does a barbaric _Colovian_ like you want from this old man?”

Colovian. He is Colovian. She? She is Colovian? They are. The person who asks the questions. The interrogator. The man who Pepe will answer to. The someone.

“Where is the Stone?” He asks— _they_ ask. She wants to know, too. This cannot be in the original time—when Marukh had taken the Stone to the Tower, could it? Or had this Pepe hidden it too? Or had… or is… is this the timeline she made? Is this? What is this? Where is this? _When_ is this?

“Where did you hide it?”

“So you’re still chasing after the Stone?” Pepe shakes his head, clicking his tongue against his teeth. Did he even have teeth? He must. Somewhere. “It seems even after centuries, the foolishness of people does not change. The Stone is not in our world anymore. It’s been carried away already. Thanks to you people, really.”

“What do you mean?”

“That War you caused. The blood of tens of thousands of people was spilled at all corners of the world. And the Stone was finally filled with it. The long suffering was not in vain. After countless uprisings and as many plagues, the Stone has been filled with the souls of millions of people. Your emperor wants that Stone? Pity. The Stone isn’t here anymore. It’s out of your reach, now.”

He’s lying. Pepe is lying, again. The Stone couldn’t be filled with mortal souls, no matter how many there are. She knows that. She knows _he_ knows that, too.

“Tell me the truth. Where is the Stone?”

“I already told you.” Pepe shrugs. “Now even the fake Ada Bal is gone. The people are finally free… If only Shezarr would appear and guide you. But we can’t have everything.”

Wait—what is Ada Bal? And the people—the people being freed, is this? Is this the future? Has this even _happened_ yet? Is this some… some memory of a future she’s not yet seen? But how could—who could…

“Where is the Stone? If you don’t tell me, you shall be executed in the morning.”

Pepe laughs, bitter and harsh. “This is what I’m concerned about,” he says. “I held the Stone for too long. Now I’m just an empty shell without a soul. My soul was forfeit long ago. I tell you this as a warning. Learn from the monster before you and stop grasping for the Stone. It will bring you nothing but your own destruction.”

Is it a warning? A portent? Some kind of… some kind of omen, somehow? A vision?

“This interrogation is over.” She can feel the anger inside her, the frustration. They _will_ find the Stone—the person she is not is sure of it. Whether Pepe helps them or not, they will find it. And they will utilize it to its fullest potential as the Alessians never could.

“Is it? Finally.” Pepe takes the seat at the other end of the table, sagging into it. “I can’t stand the smell of you Colovians.”

 _The priest_ , she hears, in a voice she has not heard in some time. _The priest laughs in the Broken Tower._

The memory fades. She stands in the non-place. The sculpture of the person reaching through the rock crumbles to ash. They have been heard. They have done their duty. They have shown her what she needs to know.

She moves. She keeps moving. There is more she must see. More she must find. She must reach Molag Bal, here, in the space between worlds and time itself. Here it will end for good. She will show him how he can not control her. Control Greymarch. Control anything. Even the lord of domination must sometimes be dominated, himself. It is only fair. It is only order. It is only the nature of chaos.

She does not know how long passes before she finds the next. But she places her hands upon one of the poor souls, some time later, and she opens her eyes in a desert.

The sand is bleached-white and blinding. The air is so hot that it burns to breathe it. Her lips crack and peel. Her skin feels blistered and raw. Her body is not her own.

It moves, and she is within it, and she can hear his thoughts. She knows who he is, without knowing how.

He is Marukh. Marukh the Imga. Marukh the Prophet. Marukh, the catalyst. He who had begun it all.

 _“How long have I been wandering in this wasteland?”_ She hears him, not as speech but as thought, ricocheting within her own skull. Echoing.

 _“Under the blazing sun, my sight diminished, my tongue swelled, and my fur mottled. I don’t even know why I’m here, or how I got here.”_ His thoughts sound like a story. Is he telling her? Is he speaking to her? Does he know she is inside him?

 _“What am I doing here…?”_ Marukh wonders. _“My memory is hazy…”_

She blinks.

She is standing in front of a tree. Marukh is standing in front of a tree. At his feet, there is the dried, half-mummified corpse of—of someone who looks familiar. Someone she has seen before. Someone she knows too well.

It is the Bard. It is Bhal. It is both of them, at once. There is a lute beside him, broken, the strings snapped. In his lap, there is the Stone. Shining up at Marukh. At her. At them.

 _“A bard’s corpse.”_ Marukh tells her. _“Was this wasteland the cause of his death? Or was he killed by a vampire, roaming this place? No matter. I will soon follow his fate, it seems.”_

She feels burning. Burning beneath the skin of her fingertips, racing up her arm, up her spine, into her mind. The Stone is in her hands. His hands. Their hands.

_“When I touched the Stone, I felt a burning pain. As if my soul was being sucked out. I wonder… Is this Stone the true nature of the vampire in this wasteland? Even now, after swallowing the Souls of thousands of people, the Stone is still not filled. Captured souls are swirling inside it…”_

No. He’s lying. She filled the Stone. She gave it Molag Bal’s soul. It’s not hungry anymore, it’s a trick, it’s—

Molag Bal stands before her.

“Useless flesh puppet,” he growls at her. “I thought it was good enough.”

It would never be good enough. Not even if he tried to make her believe she is someone else, no matter what horrors he could put her through—she would remember.

“I remember again,” she tells him simply. “I won’t forget.”

“Is that so?” Molag Bal sneers. “But nothing has changed. You will still die in this wasteland. There is only one way out. _Submit to me._ Fill the Stone with souls.”

He’s lying. He can do nothing but lie, now.

He knows what she will do when she finds him. He doesn’t want her to find him. He still thinks he can trick her.

“You used to be a mortal,” she says to him. It’s a reminder. A nudge. A kick. Just a push in the right direction. Remember, she says to him. You were once mortal, too. You could be killed once, too. Maybe that could happen again.

It’s a bluff. But it’s a threat. They both know that.

Molag Bal chuckles. “Your eyes see further than most,” he says. “So, what happened? It was a very long time ago. I can hardly remember anymore. But let me hear your decision. Will you submit to me, or will you die?”

“I would rather die.” She knows _she_ won’t die. It’s Marukh speaking. Her speaking through Marukh. And Marukh is already dead. The truth remains the same, no matter who it is. She would never submit to his wishes. No matter what he tried.

“Death it is, then.”

He is gone. She blinks, and he is gone, and Marukh’s voice is in her head again. His thoughts. His feelings. His suffering.

 _“My third eye is already blind.”_ Third… third Eye. She is conscious of it, suddenly, lying against her skin in the pouch, on her real body. On _her_ body. The Eye. It had been Marukh’s.

 _Marukh_ had been the one to show her the way.

 _“I will not last much longer… My beloved Dulsa…”_ Dulsa. The same Dulsa that the other Marukh, the first Marukh, the original Marukh, had killed. _“I only regret not being able to see you again.”_

She feels tired. No, Marukh feels tired. He wants to sleep. He wants it all to end, as they all wished it to.

_“I wish you a happy life…”_

_Where?_ Asks the Eye of her. _Where does the ape-man sleep?_

Here, and everywhere, all at once.

She is herself again. She is standing on the sands of time itself. There is a tree—a tree that looks so familiar, rising up far above her. At its base, there is the black of his armor, the horns at either side of his head. He stands. He turns. He faces her.

“Every dream must come to an end.” He walks to her. He pulls a blade as black as pitch from his back. He will kill her, now. He is tired. She is not worth it. Not worth all the trouble she has caused. He can find easier targets. “Even dreams that no longer need their dreamers cannot escape this fate.”

She is a dreamer. He is a dream. He doesn’t need her. She will end him. He cannot escape.

“Let us finish this.”

In the distance, she can hear them. The screams of the tortured. The wails of the undying. The whispers in the Horn. She can hear them all, begging her for release. Begging her to end it, once and for all. Begging her to free them.

“Tell me who I am,” Molag Bal raises his blade, lowers himself into his stance. “Who _you_ are.”

Doesn’t he know? Shouldn’t he know who she is, by now?

She knows who he is. Perhaps he has forgotten. She has not. She knows, now, as she knows everything else that has ever been.

“You are the Bard.” Dawnbreaker’s light flashes against the black of Molag Bal’s pitch-black sword. Even its radiance cannot penetrate his darkness. She holds his dagger in her off hand. His dagger. _His_. He had been the Bard, all along.

“You’re the servant, the summoner, _Altano_.”

The piece of Molag Bal that had still had his regrets—that had been Altano. Doomed to relive his greatest mistakes. Doomed to once again become a pawn of the very being he had tried to escape. Doomed to repeat the cycle.

The Bard, the servant, the Vigilant. The God. He was all of them, and yet none of them, all at once. He always had been.

Once, Molag Bal had been mortal. But he had never been the Bard, himself. He had merely acted through him, corrupted him, turned him into an aspect of himself. Bhal had been the same. Perhaps Bhal and the Bard were the same, all along. Altano had been different—Altano had been a memory, a dream, a dream that required an end.

Molag Bal had spent his eternity turning the desires of the people into their own downfalls.

The bard, who had desired Lamae. Who had only wanted her to live. Molag Bal, who had twisted that desire into something sick and profane. The Alessians, who had only wished to rise against their enslavers, to reach for freedom—who had only ended in enslaving themselves all over again, in the end—to Molag Bal.

He had tried to twist her, too. But he could not. Would not.

Mortals could be corrupted all too easily.

She is—she’s something else. Something else that he can’t touch.

But he’s _stronger_ , in this dream realm. He’s faster, and more experienced, and even with her knowledge and foresight and all of the things that the mantling had offered her, he wears her down. He wears her down until her limbs ache, until she dodges more than she fights him, and—

She ducks.

He thrusts.

She sees it coming, and her hand drops Dawnbreaker at once, reaching to stop it to do the impossible to catch the blade in her hand and her hand should have been lost, should have been cut off, it should have gone right through her but it _doesn’t_ , it catches against her palm and it doesn’t dig in but it _stops_ , and the blade _smolders_ beneath her touch and she feels it, the burning—

The burning of the inside of her forearm, the branding Lamae had placed on her _consumed_ as it eats at the Corruption within the blade. The voice at the back of her mind. One voice. Two. Hundreds. Millions.

The Bard’s dagger is heavy in her hand. She pulls at that black blade, yanking him toward her, catching him by surprise, and this time when she buries the dagger between his ribs she _feels it_. All of him.

She twists it, watching him sputter. Fascinated, in a morbid way, by his mortality. Here, she can kill him. Here and now. It won’t last. It won’t be forever. But she can _kill him_.

She buries that dagger in him, again, and again, and again, until he falls to his knees before her. He looks up, his breath little more than a half-drowning rattle.

“It can’t… end like this…”

“It will.” She tells him, and she leans down to mimick his customary sneer. “You brought this on yourself. Did you really think you could stop Greymarch? That I’d let you have me?”

He swears at her. He reaches for her throat, and she lets him. The talons of his armor bite into her skin, his hand tightening around her neck, and she cannot bring herself to care. He will die before she does.

“Leave me alone. Worry about your realm. Leave me and Serana _alone_.”

“Serana _is_ me, you fool.”

He still wants to weasel his way inside her. Still wants to twist her, even now. Even as he dies at her hands. He simply can’t help himself. It’s his nature. It’s what he is. He is the monster of monsters. The worst of the worst.

She knows what he wants. He wants a rise out of her. He wants to make her angry, make her stupid, make her make a mistake. She won’t. She won’t rise to his bait. Not this time. Not ever again.

She watches, instead, silent, as what little life he had remaining drains from the hollows of his eyes. As the red glow dims. As the talons wrapped around her neck soften and crumble to ash. As _he_ crumbles before her.

She feels the lurch, not a moment later.

There is music playing, here. But it’s a different song than the one she remembers. A different song than that damnable bard has ever played before. The back of her head rests on something soft and warm. There’s fingers in her hair. Warm fingers. Soft. Gentle.

A breeze against her skin. The smell of wildflowers and grass and bark and tree-sap.

Something falls onto her face, something light and soft and just a little bit wet.

She opens her eyes, reaching for it, and—and it is a petal. A petal from the flowering tree that blooms above her, its petals vibrant and soft pink in the height of spring. She is lying on someone’s lap, and someone’s hand cards through her hair… Someone…

She touches her chest.

She is the Bard again.

Lamae looks down at her.

“Long time no see,” she greets him—her, smiling. Her eyes are warm and blue. Kind. Soft. Pure. “Did you have a good nap?”

Funny. She doesn’t remember falling asleep.

She sits up. She looks at her, at Lamae. Lamae’s smile warms.

“Can you sing me the rest of the song?” Lamae asks her.

“…The rest?”

“Yes, the end.” Lamae tilts her head a bit, looking at her quizzically. As if she doesn’t understand. As if she doesn’t _know_. But she—she… Eres?

Eres knows. _Eres_ knows she knows. She’s Eres, and Eres knows that Lamae knows that she is Eres. She is not the Bard. She is not him. She is herself. She has always been herself.

“It’s such a sad and cruel story,” Lamae murmurs. “Shouldn’t the ending be inspiring and full of happiness?”

The story… What story would that be?

Polydor and Eloisa? They’d died at the end, hadn’t they? Star-crossed lovers, doomed by fate. But. Maybe the story doesn’t have to end that way. Stories can be changed. Rewritten. Edited and shifted into something else, something new, something happier.

“I’ll think about it,” she tells Lamae. He? Maybe. “I will come up with a good ending for it.”

Lamae smiles knowingly. “I am sure you will.” She stands. Looks down at her. “Think of something beautiful for me, okay? Promise?”

Beautiful…? Maybe… She has a few ideas. 

“My Lady.” Eres turns. _Eres_ turns, not the bard. Her. Herself. _She_ turns. She doesn’t recognize the man’s face, but she would know that voice anywhere. Facis. _H_ _uman_ Facis. Not the mutation she had seen at Windhelm. But his human self, sometime long before he had been twisted, mutated by the curse Molag Bal had laid upon him. Before he, too, had been Corrupted. As Lamae had. He had served her both in life and in death—and beyond.

“There you are.” Facis smiles when he sees her. “Lord Shor is waiting.”

Shor? Isn’t that…?

“Good,” Lamae says. She tucks her hand into the crook of Facis’ elbow, and turns only to look at her one last time. “Until we meet again.”

Eres hopes they won’t. But she says, “Until we meet again,” all the same.

Lamae turns, escorted by Facis, and the two of them walk away peacefully, arm in arm, fading into the distance against the backdrop of the idyllic meadow. The same meadow she had seen Lamae the first time. Only, this time she will not be forced to fight against her, at Molag Bal’s hand.

This time, Lamae will remain at peace. Free, in this stretch of time where she is safe and happy. Where she has found the peaceful eternity she had yearned for.

She can still hear the lute, playing behind her. Playing a soft, tranquil melody. Something that sounds hopeful, that sounds bright and uplifting, that sounds a bit like a dream. It plays with no one to strum it, waiting for her to touch her hands upon it.

But she can also hear something else. Something that sounds like the familiar, ominous drone of Molag Bal’s totems, somewhere on the other side of the tree.

Was this the moment?

Was _this_ the moment where the Bard had been Corrupted? Was this the moment he had chosen the Stone, in his desire to have Lamae for his own?

Was this what had started it all, so long ago?

Eres does not look for the totem. She doesn’t want to know where it is. She doesn’t want to tempt him—the Bard, the man she exists within, for this one singular moment in time. She doesn’t want him to even have an inkling of the power he might one day hold in his own hands. That is a future that she cannot allow to come to pass. Not again.

Eres bends, reaching with hands that are not her own, and she takes that lute into them.

Its song continues, even as she hears his voice upon the wind.

_“Some time later, her screams echoed across the fjords of Skyrim.”_

It was the Bard. It was him. The servant. Bhal. The man who had been both a facet of Molag Bal and yet not. The man who had first fallen to Corruption, who had led to Lamae’s violation at Molag Bal’s behest.

_“I remember carrying her unconscious, violated body to the nearby camp of the Laza nomads.”_

Laza. The shepherd who had become a wolf. The one who had held such hate in his heart for Molag Bal that he had lost his own humanity in his quest for revenge.

_“But she did not wake up again, and Nirn lost a bright star of her light that day.”_

She did not wake up again, in this time. She was never risen by Molag Bal, because the Bard had not fallen to the temptation he was offered. He let her go, though his heart ached to do so, and she was lost here, forever. Her death became an unfortunate tragedy, rather than the beginning of a horrific nightmare that would last for millennia.

 _“Once upon a time, when the Eldergleam was still young, before it was trapped underground,”_ the Bard continues, in her ears, in her mind, and she looks up, up at the branches and blossoms of the magnificent tree that rises above her head, high into the sky. _“The world was full of danger and wondrous magic. Terrible magic.”_

_“But I will not bow down to that cruel fate. I will not submit. Some day, I know that this suffering will pass, and fade away like a morning fog. All the sins will be forgiven, and all the blood shall be washed away… One day.”_

_“One day, everything shall be buried by the sands of time. So shall we all become nothing more than a part of the songs.”_

Eres feels a prickling at the back of her neck, an awareness. She turns, lute in hand, and she sees him. Him. Molag Bal. In all his terrible magnificence, in his black armor, his pincered helmet, his arms crossed over his chest as he leans against the Eldergleam beside her. Just feet from her. So close that she can feel him, feel his Corruption that reaches for her even now. She knew she might see him again, in some form. In some way or another. As much as she might have wished she would not, she knew. He was not some mortal she could kill and bury and forget about for the rest of her days. He was a God, and he could not be killed any more than Durnehviir could be. He could only be dispersed, for a time. For a moment. 

But she does not fear him, now.

Things are not as they once were.

“I don’t understand.” Molag Bal murmurs, shaking his head. “If you wanted, she could have lived again. She could have been yours. Why? Why did you refuse me?”

He sounds—lost. Confused. Like he can’t imagine why he had been thwarted in this moment. He had been certain she—no, the Bard—would fall to him, here. He has to know _why_. He has to know _how_ she had the strength to turn away from him.

But he can’t. He could never know. He doesn’t have the capacity. A heartless god cannot understand the workings of empathy and love and—and all the things that make her mortal. That made the Bard mortal, once. He has long since forgotten what it meant to be such a thing, if he had ever known it at all.

“You could never understand.”

He stares at her. She gets the sense that he frowns beneath his helmet, that he tries his best to see through her. To see _her_ , beneath the Bard. Within the Bard.

In this time, he does not know her yet. Or maybe he does. Maybe he realizes something isn't quite right. Time doesn't work any more strictly for Daedra than it does for their realms. Maybe there is a part of him now, even his past self, that senses what she will become - what she will make of him. 

“You never told me your name.”

And with the way he peers at her, she knows he does not mean the Bard. She knows that. He looks at her in the same way Lamae had. He _can_ see her, underneath the underneath.

“Eres.” She tells him. She wants him to know who she is. To know who it was that brought his empire crashing down around him—or, to know who it will be, one day. Who she will be, one day.

He hums, low in his throat. “A good name,” he murmurs. “It will have a firm place in my soul.”

He knows her, now.

He will know another.

“There’s another name you should know.”

“Oh?”

“Serana.” He straightens. Perhaps there is something that recognizes this name, too, even now. Even here, in this pocket of time long before he had ever taken her. Long before the Volkihars had even come to be.

“You’ll leave her alone,” she tells him. “And me. And everyone I care about. Anyone—If you come to any of them, I’ll destroy you. I’ll destroy everything you care about.”

He chuckles. “Mortals,” he tsks. “I care for nothing. Nothing but—“

“Power,” she finishes for him. “I’ll take that, too.” She holds his gaze. She wants him to know, to understand just how serious she is. “I already have. I’ll do it again, as many times as I have to. Or you could learn to leave well enough alone.”

He regards her for a long, tense moment. For a moment, she fears he is going to refuse, in the back of her mind.

If he refuses, she’s not sure she can do what she promises. If he comes for her again, could she count on being able to do - whatever it was she'd done in Coldharbour a second time? Could she count on him making the same mistakes he had made the first time? Could she count on his arrogance leading to her victory once more? He would know better, by then. He wouldn't underestimate her. Molag Bal is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

But Molag Bal laughs. When he speaks again, he sounds—he sounds almost _impressed_. It makes her skin crawl to hear that tone in his voice, directed at her.

“Very well.” He says, and she can sense his smirk. She can sense his satisfaction. “I’ll make you a deal, _Eres_.” The sound of her name on his tongue makes her want to recoil, makes her want to shudder. But he must know it. He must remember it.

“This will be the last time you and I meet,” he tells her. “I will leave you be—consider it…showing my _respect_.” His voice slithers against her skin, groping at her.

He steps closer to her, until he towers over her. He smiles down at her. Cruelly. Knowingly.

“From one _Emperor_ ,” he murmurs, “to another. You have bested me, this once. Only someone as hungry as myself could have done such a thing. You have such _hunger_ in you. Such a _lust_ for power. I see a bit of myself in you.”

Her lip curls. “I’m nothing like you.”

“So you believe.” Molag Bal leans back. “But you and I both gain power through domination, in our own rights. You and I—don’t you see? We’re siblings, in a way. Perhaps we can learn to get along.”

She turns away from him in disgust. He’s just trying to get under her skin, and she knows it.

“You may have your domain,” he calls after her. “But I will have mine. And should you come to me again—know that I won’t let you go so easily. No matter who you claim to be.”

Ah. So he knows. About the mantling. He must. He could never have been bested by a mere mortal.

“Neither will I.” She says to him. “Never again.”

“Never again,” he muses. He sweeps his arm out in an exaggerated, theatrical bow. “So it shall be, _Shezarrine_. You leave me to mine, and I shall leave you to yours. I trust we have an understanding.”

“For now.” She tells him. “But I know you can’t help yourself.”

“You may be surprised,” he says to her. He sounds so _amused_. So pleased with her, in his own way. “Never let it be said that I do not show respect for my _equals_.”

She knows what he means. She knows he means that she is like him, that she is just as domineering and power hungry as he is. Not that she is his equal in power, but only that she is his equal in his quest for power. In his Corruption. He could not be more wrong. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if he's wrong, if he's lying through his teeth. He says it because he knows it will irk her, and she knows it. 

She does not respond to him. She does not get the chance, because the meadow fades, the Eldergleam fades, everything—everything fades.

She wakes.

She wakes, and she sees Isran’s face above her own, looking down at her with concern.

She feels… She feels so _tired_.

“It’s… done.” Even just speaking… takes so much of her energy. The words come out as barely more than a mumble. She can only hope he understands.

 _Take me home,_ she thinks, because she cannot summon the energy to say it. _Take me home. Take me back. Take me back to her._

Distantly, she feels him lift her into the air.

Distantly, she hears him tell Serana that it’s time. At long last. At long last, it’s time for her to come home.

“Open the portal, Serana. We’re coming home.”

The last thing she hears is the sound of the Horn clattering to the ground—and the deafening _snap_ of the very air being ripped open nearby.

 _Home_. She would be home, soon.

It’s finally over.

She is free.


	15. Epilogue

ACT V  
EPILOGUE  
  


_“Open the portal, Serana. We’re coming home.”_

Serana meets Valerica’s gaze, then Mirabelle’s beside her. At once, she and Valerica take their places by the edge of the circle’s perimeter. With a shallow cut into her wrist, Serana allows her blood to drip onto the finely ground dust upon the floor. Something in her chest aches, turns over, twists on itself.

It feels like her something’s knotted up inside her, like all of her worry and fear and longing and every other raw emotion she had felt until now had all twisted around each other into one big knot, and now each of them war to pull away from the others, to claw to the surface and take center stage, and she can’t breathe for the ache it brings in her.

 _Eres._ Eres is coming home.

One week.

It had been one week since Isran and Inigo had stepped through that portal. It had been just over two weeks, since Inigo had come to them, terrified and desperate, and had told her the very last thing she had ever wanted to hear. She would have given her entire life not to hear those words.

But now. Now, it’s all over. They’re _done_.

The air rips open in front of her. She and Valerica step back as one.

At her other side, she sees Mirabelle writing her own sigils upon the ground, fashioning the teleportation circle that will bring them to Fellburg. Eres’ home. The home that Serana has never seen with her own eyes. The family she has never met. That she had barely even know existed, in some ways. Eres had never spoken much of them.

She does not ask how Mirabelle knows how to get to Fellburg. She does not ask how Mirabelle knows there is receiving circle on the other end. She does not care.

Eres will be home, _really_ home, and that is all that matters. She will have the people who love her most surrounding her. She will have all of them.

Serana most of all.

Inigo comes first. His fur is so dusty and covered with layers of dirt that his normally deep purple coloring is almost beige under the layers of it. But he meets Serana’s gaze with his own, and grins, raising his hands triumphantly into the air. He closes his eyes as he crosses the threshold and sucks in a deep breath.

“Skyrim!” He cries to the sky. “How Inigo has missed you!”

Mirabelle chuckles at him. Serana does not.

Her eyes are on the portal. Her eyes are on—

On Isran. On Isran, who walks through, almost as dirty as Inigo himself, but—he holds Eres in his arms.

Tightness closes around Serana’s throat.

She’s so _thin._

Serana rushes to him, pressing her hands to Eres’ skin—warm, warm just as it has always been, but she—she doesn’t so much as twitch when Serana’s hands light upon her face. Her eyes remain closed. They do not flutter, or shift, there is nothing to indicate she has even so much as sensed Serana.

She is, for all that it is worth, dead to the world.

“She’s exhausted,” Isran murmurs to her. He holds her up, knowing that she will take Eres from him. He relinquishes his hold upon her willingly. Expectantly—he had known she would want to be the one to carry her home. “She passed out as soon as it was done.”

“To be expected,” Valerica says reasonably. “She has likely not rested in some time. Even had she not mantled Shezarr, I do not imagine Coldharbour was a relaxing experience for her.”

She’s too light. Serana swallows past a lump in her throat. She’s _too light_. She’s carried Eres before. For only a few seconds, maybe, but she remembers—she remembers carrying her in the Soul Cairn, and even in the Forgotten Vale after that. She remembers. Eres had always been slender, had always been lean.

But she’d never been _thin_. She’d never been this light, this skinny, this—this malnourished, this gaunt. Even her cheeks are not as full as they should be. She has slimmed there, too, and even her robes are terrifyingly loose around her, as tattered and worn as they might be.

This is not a couple of weeks worth of weight loss. This is—this is far beyond that. This is months. Months of neglect, of starvation, of who-knew-what.

Eres had been there so much longer than any of them had realized.

“Mirabelle.” Her voice comes out too thick. She clears her throat, turning to look at her. “The circle.”

“It is ready.” Mirabelle assures her, and she stands. “Whenever you are.”

Serana steps toward her. Inigo is already on his way, assured in the fact that he will be joining them, too. Valerica goes, because Serana goes. She will not be in the fort of vampire hunters without Serana there, as well.

But Isran does not.

“Are you coming?” Serana asks him, even as she steps into the circle herself.

Isran’s lips press tightly together. There is a conflict deep within his eyes. He looks like he wants to come, but doesn’t feel as though he _should_. Serana doesn’t know what she can say to him.

Inigo does. “You are her family too, now,” he says quietly. “She will want you there when she wakes. Will you have her wonder where you are?”

Isran looks away. “I have responsibilities here…”

Valerica scoffs. “The Dawnguard are not needed now, and you know this as well as I do. The vampires have run back to ground after Harkon’s death. I am sure your men can manage to function without you for a time. Until she recovers.”

Isran scoffs, shaking his head. But he moves. He comes to them. He steps inside the circle.

“Careful, Valerica,” he mutters. “You’re going to sound like you care.”

They are met with an entire contingent upon their arrival. There is a blond man and woman who are all too happy to direct them all upstairs to where Eres’ quarters are, and later split to offer each of their new visitors rooms of their own within the Keep.

The Keep seems much smaller than Fort Dawnguard’s, but Serana cares little to see the rest of it. She takes the man’s direction to Eres’ rooms and she takes her there, leaving the rest behind. She does not even leave the room when the healer offers to wash and dress her in fresh clothes, though she might have done so once.

She remains, turning to inspect the shelves that line the walls of Eres’ modest room. It’s not as big as she might have imagined it would be, though she doesn’t turn to look at the rest. Eres deserves to retain her modesty, even if she is unconscious. Serana instead runs her fingers along the spines of the books and tomes she finds there, organized in no particular manner that Serana can see. A fiction book here, a spell tome there. There’s a couple of volumes of _A Brief History of the Empire_ , several referential volumes about the Daedra. _On Oblivion, Myths of Sheogorath, The Book of Daedra_.

Eres is even more of an academic than Serana had realized. She’s read most of these books herself, but there are a few she’s not touched yet. A few she might take to reading. Until Eres wakes.

A hand is at her shoulder, gentle. Warm.

“She’s ready,” says the woman. There is a gentle smile upon her lips. A knowing one. “Am I correct in assuming you wish to stay with her?”

Serana looks. Eres is upon the bed, tucked beneath the covers. She still looks _so small_. It hurts to look at her, still, but in a way that is both good and bad at the same time.

“Yes,” she manages. She leaves the books behind.

“I’ve given her a draught to help her sleep,” the woman tells her, as Serana sits on the edge of the bed beside her. “She has… been through quite the ordeal, from what I have been told.” When Serana looks up at her, the woman says, “Mirabelle is a good friend of mine.”

“I see.” She might have examined that, any other time. But right now, she has eyes only for Eres. Only for her. “How long will she sleep?”

“Some time yet,” she says. “But I shall wake her at times, to feed her. She will need to build her strength again over time.”

Serana nods. Eres sleeps on. She looks peaceful, at least. Even if Serana does miss the sight of those eyes, of her smile. She looks serene, in whatever dream she might be in now.

“Should you have need of anything, you need only call upon me.”

Serana turns her head to catch the woman as she moves to duck out of the room. “I never caught your name.”

The woman smiles. It looks—it looks familiar, somehow. Serana’s sure she knows this woman from somewhere.

“Auria,” she says pleasantly.

Serana nods, and turns back. Turns away. The door closes.

They are alone.

 _She_ is alone with her. With Eres. After so much time apart.

Serana tosses her cloak to the floor. Her armor follows. Her boots. Her dagger and its sheath. All of it, until she is in nothing but her shirt and pants.

Serana doesn’t sleep. Not really. As a vampire, she doesn’t need to. She’s never required it, though she certainly can if she tries. If she goes without food long enough, or if she’s just bored enough that she doesn’t wish to do anything else to pass the time.

But here, and now, she wants nothing more than to be near her. She climbs beneath those covers with her, scoots until she is close enough to feel the warmth of her body heat—but not quite touching, no matter how much she wishes for nothing more than to draw Eres into her arms, to hold her while she sleeps. She doesn’t have the right to do that, yet, but… She might. One day. One day, she hopes she might.

Instead, Serana turns on her side, facing her. And she watches over her, unable to pull her eyes away. She can’t help the feeling that Eres might disappear if she looks away for too long, and so she does not.

She will be here, when Eres wakes. She will always be here for her, as long as she is wanted. Longer, even. She will never leave her side again. Not after this. Eres needs her. _Serana_ needs Eres. In a way she hadn’t thought could even be possible, she needs her. She needs her.

She needs her.

If, in the middle of the night, Eres turns into her arms, surely Serana cannot be blamed for not pushing her away. Surely, no one would fault her for only holding her as Eres’ sleeping mind seemed to wish to be held. She cannot be blamed for embracing her, for pulling her so much closer than she might have ever dared on her own.

She cannot be blamed, for loving her. For loving her in the only way she knows how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're... finally halfway through. I hate that this is the halfway point. But, good news is that finally the slowburn will be making some progress now that Molag Bal is all handled. Next act will probably be up in the next couple of weeks maybe. The skeleton of it is already written but I have some editing left to do. All in all, though, it's a much more light-hearted act than this one and should be a welcome reprieve. Alternate title for Act 6: Eres gets some fuckin' well-deserved rest. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the act despite its shortcomings. This was probably the hardest one to write since the mod's "plot" in Coldharbour is pretty much just (shrug emoji). Like there's something there but there's like, negative structure lmao. Just search "What was the Vigilant mod about" and one of the first results will be a reddit post attempting to explain the mod that literally made me want to scream reading it. So I scrapped like 90% of it and did my own thing with it. Bare bones is still Vicn's though. 
> 
> As a final note for this arc of the story, if you enjoy Skyrim modding, here are the mods referenced in the fic up to this point:   
> LC Build Your Own Noble House (Player Home) - Fellburg Keep/Estate  
> Darkend (Quest) by jkrojmal- The cursed shipwreck Mirabelle mentions when she tells Seres how to find Septimus.   
> Vigilant (Quest) by Vicn - Provided the basis and inspiration for Acts 2, 5, and the first couple chapters of Act 3 (the Windhelm Investigation).   
> Inigo (Follower) by smartbluecat - Seriously would recommend even if you're not a hardcore modder. He's probably the most lifelike companion out there. 
> 
> and lastly:  
> Serana and Claire by Plooshy (Glow Eyes Option - Red) - If you've been to my blog and seen some of the concept art, you might notice Serana's hair is a bit different in my art than in game. This is because A) I suck at drawing braids, and B) Serana's appearance is based off the "Thorns" (chin-length hair) preset of this mod. It gives her a more mid-twenties vamp look than. Also I like the eye glow. Fun to turn around in a dark place and just see two red eyes glowing at you. The cat jokes about Serana sort of came from this mod lol 
> 
> Anyways, congrats to you if you actually read all this. Farewell for now until Act 6!


End file.
